Illiteracy

Author's name: Agota Kristof Publisher: Al-Jamal Publications for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2014 Literary classification: Biographies and Memoirs Overview of the book: This book is a reading into the (biography of the author) Agota Kristof. A Hungarian writer born in 1935 – died in 2011. She writes in French. Her novel (The Third Lie) won the French "Livre Inter" Prize for the novel in 1992. It is her third novel after (The Big Notebook) 1986, and (The Guide) 1988. Her works have been translated into nearly forty languages. The book (Illiteracy) is a fitting title for a writer who had to learn the language late in life, and start literacy lessons, until she became "the natural equivalent" of major literary models like "Beckett" or "Conrad"... They all came to French from different literary backgrounds, but the way Agota came to French was a humble situation, (...) Agota Kristof wrote like someone learning a language, and there is no doubt that her first novel The Big Notebook determined her writing path and the literary style she adopted later... In the book (Illiteracy), as well as in the dialogues conducted by the author, though few, and in some rare excerpts from her novels, we find passages referring to the act of reading. In her brief biography, the translator notes "that she suffered from a reading disorder from the age of four and never stopped reading, but she did not mention any book by name..." In this work, translator Mohamed Ayt Hana surrounds the author's works with a special file that includes a lengthy interview conducted with the author before her death. The book also contains translations of selected articles discussing her literary content. The aim of this book "is not just to transfer Agota's biography but to serve as an entry through which the reader can get to know a writer whose literature will undoubtedly deeply influence Arab literary taste and writing." The book includes an introduction to the book (Illiteracy) and the author's question, in addition to an overview of the beginnings of her biography and selected articles under titles such as: "Poems," "Jokes," "Mother tongue and enemy languages," "Stalin's death," "Memory," "Relocated people," "The desert," "How to become a writer," "Illiteracy," "Agota Kristof: The Exercise of Nihilism," "Who hanged the cat," (...) and other titles.