Origins and turn of the 20th century

A simple glance at a planisphere confirms that Tunisia was at the crossroads of the ancient worlds, a thorough reading of its history attests that it was in turn a point of convergence and cradle of civilizations. Indissociable from the greatness of Carthage, its past is revealed through various emblematic texts. Thus, those interested in ancient times will not be mistaken and will know how to obtain the theological reflections of Tertullian as well as the Correspondence of Saint-Cyprian, these writings of the third century being available in particular from Les Belles Lettres, which also offers the indispensable Noces de Philologie et de Mercure of the Carthaginian writer Martianus Capella, who was a little later. In 2002, the prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade collection (Gallimard) celebrated the intelligence and erudition of Ibn Khaldun, born in Tunis in 1332, with The Book of Examples

, a scholarly work that deals with politics and history as well as all the sciences that can be defined as human. Other references, Punic, Latin, Arabic, Judeo-Arabic or Berber, would deserve to appear in this short evocation, although some have been lost, hastily translated or limited to pure orality, but a temporal leap allows us to reach the 19th century, which constitutes a real turning point in what it is judicious to call "Tunisian literature.

While French was being established in Tunisia through bilingual school education, a few years before the beginning of the colonial period (1881-1956), Arabic was reinvented as a modern language. This renaissance blossomed in a more global movement, that of the Nahda, but it was nevertheless subject to some clashes, if we are to believe the reception reserved for the conference given by Abou el Kacem Chebbi in 1929 at the Khaldounia. The young man, born in 1909 and who unfortunately will not survive his 25 years, poet of Arabic language strongly influenced by the current romanticism, questioned the imagination of his peers and precursors who, in his opinion, privileged the beauty on the feeling, accentuating his purpose by denouncing the representation of the woman reduced to her finery in the Arab world.

His perfect contemporary, Ali Douagi, remains, him also, haloed of a reputation of public agitator, since by insufflating the dialect in his stories and plays he had the pleasure to displease some. He remains nevertheless estimated as being one of the first to have introduced the genre of the news, and as a painter, realistic and sometimes mocking, of the Tunisian life of the inter-war period. Both assiduously frequented a café, Taht Essour, which symbolically gave its name to the group of intellectuals who liked to meet there, to which belonged Mustapha Khraïef (1909-1967), poet and journalist whose talent did not compete with that of his brother, Béchir Khraïef (1917-1983) writer known in particular for his stance in favor of women. At the same time, and while the Poems of a Cursed of the unfortunate Marius Scalesi (1892-1922), poet of Sicilian origin writing in French, emerges a Judeo-Tunisian literature. In 1929, a collection of poems named after the ghetto, La Hara conte, was published by Vitalis Danon, Jacques Véhel and Ryvel. All three will join the Society of Writers of North Africa, founded in 1919 by Pierre Hubac, which will be at the initiative of the creation of the editions of the Kahena which will publish, among others, the work of Mahmoud Aslan. Writers do not hesitate to navigate between languages, like Mahmoud Messadi who published in 1942 a short story in French, Le Voyageur, before becoming one of the greatest writers of Arabic language. We owe him, for example, a philosophical play in eight acts, Essoud(The Dam), now studied in school and published in 1955, on the eve of the independence signed on March 20, 1956.

After the French protectorate

Tunisia became a republic in 1957, but was still under the yoke of a repressive government, first under Bourguiba and then under Ben Ali. The Arab Spring of 2010 is still in everyone's memory. Criticism of the government has led to endless exile for some, such as Hachemi Baccouche (1916-2008), the author of Ma foi demeure and La Dame de Carthage, or Albert Memmi (1920-2020) who decided to take French nationality in the 1970s. Many times awarded for his literary work, his novelized autobiography La Statue de sel (Folio editions) is as much a quest for origins as it is an incessant questioning of the notion of identity, a theme dear to Hédi Bouraoui who had to curb the influences of his two homelands, tunisia and Canada (Transpoétique - Éloge du nomadisme, published by Mémoire d'encrier), and Rafik Ben Salah who - in a nod - published in 2019 Récits d'Helvétie fifteen years after his Récits de Tunisie

were published by the same publisher. While the Tunisian literature of French language ignores the borders and finds a certain recognition abroad - it would still be good to mention the journalist Abdelwahab Meddeb (1946-2014), the poet Tahar Bekri born in Gabes in 1951 and the novelist Mustapha Tlili published in the White Collection at Gallimard (from La Rage aux tripes in 1975 to Un après-midi dans le désert in 2008) -, the works of Arabic language multiply and attack another barrier: the "three prohibitions" of sex, religion and politics. This boldness is sometimes subject to censorship, as was the case with Kamel Riahi's Le Scalpel, which was banned under Ben Ali and is now undesirable in Saudi Arabia, but it has the distinct advantage of highlighting important issues: women's rights in Zaynab by Aroussia Nallouti (Actes sud, 2005) or Pas de deuil pour ma mère by Hassouna Mosbahi (Elyzad, 2019), transsexuality in Messaouda Boubaker or family relations in La Chaise à bascule by Amel Mokhtar. If since the revolution the beautiful part is left to the essays, an evolution seems all the same to take shape, the ability to refer to a single language that the new generation has found. Walid Soliman, who in addition to his activity as a writer practices that of translator, or Wafa Ghorbel, who has herself transposed into literary Arabic her Black Jasmine, are perhaps the sign that a new Tunisian identity is being invented and that it will be able to unify its multiple facets.