MedReset is pleased to announce that the winner of its Young Writers Prize is Omar Shanti!
"El Haraga" Read Through Maghrebi Literary Production
Excerpt:
“O Traveller, where are you going? You’ll exhaust yourself and return. How many naïve people have regretted their departures before you and me?”[1]So goes the chorus of Dahmane Harrachi’s nationally cherished song, Ya Rayah, lining the halls of Maghrebi cultural heritage: adopted afresh by new artists decade after decade, never allowed to join its composer in death’s long rest. Along with it in its state of forcedly drawn-out existence are countless other cultural artefacts of myriad form that also revolve around themes of migration, absence, and alienation. This cultural tradition is reinforced by new waves of production that reflect upon and respond to patterns of migration in the globalized, post-colonial world. These works journey across time and space, bridging the past with the present and the destination with the point of departure. They orient themselves on the borderlands and displace the conceptual “centre” of Maghrebi culture.
