National Library of Tunisia publishes homage to Albert Memmi

The National Library of Tunisia has published a booklet paying posthumous tribute to the Franco-Tunisian Jewish writer Albert Memmi, who passed away in Paris in May 2020, aged 99.

The 126-page booklet is made up of several testimonies and texts by Tunisian teachers, bloggers, researchers, translators, musicians, journalists, inspectors, actors, jewelry designers, Hellenists and Latinists sharing their perspectives on the late writer and public intellectual.

The preface to the booklet is signed by Raja Ben Slama, Director General of the National Library of Tunisia, published in Arabic with a French translation.

“Tunis brings us together”: its colors shimmer around the couch on which Albert Memmi sits”, writes Ben Slama on the cover of the booklet. “The white walls and Jasmine. And the togetherness that lives in its name, as if the only pronunciation of the word Tunisia was a conjugation of loneliness … This is what makes [Tunisia] present in the existence of Albert Memmi and in his poetics, because as he affirmed there, he never really left it.”

The National Library of Tunisia is also hosting a photographic exhibition entitled “La Hara d’Albert Memmi”, presenting the Jewish quarter in the Medina of Tunis, called “El Hara”, now demolished, where Albert Memmi was born and spent most of his youth. They are a collection of old photos by Bernard Allali, a writer on the history and culture of the Jews of Tunisia.

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