According to agooddir, Algeria presents a particularly varied cultural framework in which the Kabyle tradition converges, expressed mainly in Berber dialect, of which Marguerite Taos Amrouche (1913-1976) has collected the most beautiful things in an anthology, entitled The magic grain (1966) ; classical Arabic, literary and musical culture; and, finally, French culture. Algeria contributed to classical Arabic literature with the mystical verses and maxims of Abū Madyan (1126-1197), with the poems of at-Tilimsānī (1216-1291), with the literary biographies of Aḥmad al-Gubrīnī (1246-1314) and with the work of Ibn Abī Haǧalah (1325-1375), author of a curious anthology (The sugar bowl). From the century XV until the colonial conquest (1830) the Algerian culture remained essentially entrusted to popular song, to ritual, to oral tradition based on the story. In the nineteenth century, by some writers of secondary importance, travel reports and scholarly and religious works appeared; people began to write also in dialect Arabic (Algerian, with Moroccan, Tunisian and Libyan, forms the group of Maghrebi Arabic dialects). After the French conquest, the meddāhs (popular singers) sang the pain of the vanquished and exalted the spirit of resistance to the invader and the Islamic national tradition. Proud patriotic songs also composed the protagonists of the first resistance to the occupation: the brilliant and cultured leader ʽAbd al-Qādir, the Berber poet Sī Moḥand (1840-1906), Moqrānī and Muḥammad Belkheyr. In 1920 Robert Arnaud (1873-1950) with the manifesto of indigenism invited writers to look for an original form of expression. Jean Amrouche (1906-1962) collected in 1934 the elements of the Algerian tradition in Cendres (Ceneri) and in 1939 he published the Chansons berbères de Kabylie (Berber songs of Kabylia). However, a literature that was new with respect to tradition first developed among writers with a European background, especially through the work of the School of Algiers, with writers such as Albert Camus, Emmanuel Roblès, Gabriel Audisio and Jean Pelegri; but their production is not recognized as fundamentally Algerian by current critics. A real Algerian literature was born around 1950 and developed at the beginning during the liberation struggles (1954-62), expressing itself almost exclusively in French and in the form of the novel and the essay. Characterized by a naturalistic accent, it testifies to the resistance, the enthusiasm for a new society to be built, the unease created by the coexistence of two cultures (the Arab-Berber and the French) and the revolt against the sclerosis of Muslim society. Poetic, lucid and violent, in short, it reflects the multiple experiences of the Muslim soul. And in this regard, the influence that, especially since the beginning of the nineties of the twentieth century, Islamic fundamentalism exercises in Algeria, as in other Muslim countries, on literary production by imposing threats and death sentences on writers who do not consider themselves aligned. For example, the killing of Y. Sebti in Paris in 1994 should be remembered. In the late 1990s, Algerian writers tried to reconnect with their past and classical Arab culture, also trying to create a national literature despite the strong pushes to regional particularism, especially Kabyle, by Ouary Malek with Poésies et chants de Kabylie (1973) and Azzédine Bounemeur with Les Bandits de l’Atlas (1982; The bandits of the Atlas). But most of the Algerian French-language production of the 1980s and 1990s has characteristics that share it more with the socio-political essay than with the actual novel. This is also due to the fact that many authors are part of that “second generation of immigration” who lives in France, and is therefore mainly addressed to their compatriots who reside here, and to the beur, the French of Maghrebi origin. The first important novel of the new literature is undoubtedly Le fils du pauvre (1950; The son of the poor), an autobiographical novel by a modest teacher from Kabylia, Mouloud Feraoun (1913-1962). Another Kabyle writer is Mouloud Mammeri (1919-1989), author of three novels: La colle oubliée (1952; The forgotten hill), Le sommeil du juste (1955; The sleep of the just) and L’opium et le bâton (1964; Opium and the Stick), in which he describes the infighting that tears his country apart. A very talented writer is Mohammed Dib (1920-2003), author of the Algérie trilogy, in which he describes the simple life of Tlemcen and the anguish of the residents in the face of tragic events, from 1939 to 1943. Also the narrative work of Mālek Ḥaddād (1927-1978) is dominated by the theme of Algeria at war and shows the bewilderment of characters, more poetic than real, faced with radical changes for which they cannot understand the reasons. But the best contemporary writer was undoubtedly Kateb Yacine (1929-1989) who, while dealing with the same themes as the other authors, stood out for a profound originality. A complex writer, he was a novelist (Nedjma, 1956), a playwright (Le cercle des représailles, 1959), a poet. Among the writers still worth mentioning: Henri Kréa (b. 1933), novelist, poet, essayist, playwright and journalist; Jean Sénac (1926-1973), poet; Rachid Boudjedra (b.1941), poet and novelist. This literature is essentially documentary, uses a descriptive style, a language that is sometimes non-literary as in the case of Le thé au Harem d’Archi Ahmed (1983; Il the nell’harem by Archi Ahmed) by Mehdi Charef.