Ahmed taleb ibrahimi albert camus biography book

Doctor journalist politician intellectual.

It begins with an overview chapter that charts the evolution of Algerian literature and puts it in its proper historical context, followed by five thematic chapters: decolonization and cultural .

He is the son of Islamic theologian and renowned scholar Bashir Ibrahim. Educated locally and then at Algiers where he began his medical studies in and proceeded to Paris to graduate after specialising in dermatology in He grew up in a family of modest means, which was yet in contrast intellectually and spiritually wealthy. His father, Sheikh Bashir Ibrahimi, a renowned scholar, was already fighting the French colonialism not with a military weapon but with his sharp pen and voice.

As a child and an adolescent, Ahmed quickly acquired from his father a precious knowledge and a general culture which he will later rely and build on. In he moved to Paris to further his medical education, and after that he earned a degree in Hematology, interning at few Parisian hospitals. One of the intellectuals in government, twice imprisoned for his political principles—first in a French gaol as a detainee alongside Ben Bella, then after independence in an Algerian gaol, where he was tortured after being sent there on Ben Bella's orders.

In his famous prison letters, TalebIbrahimi had written of the profound disappointment he felt in Camus during the Algerian War of Independence.

A sensitive man who graduated as a doctor and became a skin specialist but also a man of literary talent who worked as a journalist and wrote movingly of his ordeal in prison. After his release he became a member of the Algerian delegation to the United Nations in On his return to Algeria he was strongly opposed to the cult of personality and abandoned politics to resume medicine at the Mustapha Hospital at Algiers as a blood specialist and as a lecturer at the medical faculty of Algiers University.

In June he was arrested and endured harsh treatment, including torture, in prison. His political fortunes improved immediately after Boumedienne came to power in July He gave fresh impetus to the school building programme, the campaign against illiteracy and the promotion of Arabic studies. His enthusiasm for Arabic resulted in his being made a corresponding member of the Arab Academy at Damascus.