I Overcome the River Current

Saïd Khatibi

The events of this novel unfold between a morgue, a clinic, and an interrogation room where a woman accused of murdering her husband is questioned. On the other side of the city, old militants gather to clear themselves of fabricated accusations of collaboration. One of these militants is the accused woman's father, who will, in turn, be investigated in his daughter's case.

The novel chronicles half a century of Algerian history, from World War II until the early nineties, passing through the War of Liberation and its aftermath. It unveils unspoken social crises such as: generational rifts, the chasm between parents and children, failed marriages and escaping them into secret relationships, motherhood and its hardships, human organ donation and trafficking caught between circumventing the law and saving those who have lost them...

It masterfully portrays people whose lives ended up as prisoners of their fates, their destinies hanging on the fate of one person; a journalist they are waiting for to arrive from the capital.
With equal brilliance, it depicts the feverish anticipation of those waiting, oscillating between incomplete despair and unfulfilled hope.
A novel of the particular and the general, and a novel of the alienation of selves within their crises.

Saïd Khatibi – Algerian writer (born in Boussaada, 1984), holds a Master's degree in Cultural Studies from Sorbonne University, and a Bachelor's degree in French Literature from the University of Algiers. He has published five novels, the latest being "The End of the Desert" (Noufal, 2022), which won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award (2023 edition). His novels have been translated into seven languages.

"The novel's plot builds escalatingly, leaving the reader with no choice but to keep reading." Baha Ben Nouar – Karras Al-Thaqafa (Algeria), about the novel "The End of the Desert".