Andrée Chédid

1920 -

One of the most prominent and prolific authors writing in French from the Middle East.

Andrée Chédid was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1920 to a Lebanese family. After receiving her B.A. from the American University in Cairo and marrying, at twenty-one, Louis Chédid, she moved with her husband to Paris, where she has been living since 1946. Although her first collection of poems was written in English (On the Trails of My Fancy, 1943), most of Chédid's work is in French, and includes novels, short stories, plays, essays, and poetry, as well as children's books.

Like other francophone writers from the Middle East such as Amin Maalouf, Andrée Chédid is a product of both the Orient and the West. This hybrid aspect is reflected in her entire work, whose universality and humanity appeal to readers throughout the world. In most of her early novels, such as Le sommeil délivré (1952; Sleep Unbound), Le sixième jour (1960; The Sixth Day), L'autre (1969; The Other), and Nefertiti et le rêve d'Akhnaton (1974; Nefertiti and Akhnaton's Dream), Chédid used her native Middle East as the setting for her stories. Her poetry deals with nature, love and brotherhood, but is also an outcry against the violence and wars that constantly devastate not only the Middle East, but the entire world. Her plays, such as The Goddess Lar (1977), Les nombres (1965; The Numbers), and Le montreur (1967, The Showman), deal with the disenfranchisement of women in traditional societies. More recent works include the poems Guerres (1999; Wars); Territoires du souffle (1999; Territories of Breath), and Le souffle des choses (2000; The Breath of Things), and the novel Le message (2000; The Message).

Most of Chédid's writings have been translated into more than fifteen languages, and two of her novels, L'autre (The Other) and Le sixième jour (The Sixth Day) were made into films by, respectively, Bernard Giraudeau (1990) and Youssef Chahine (1996).

Bibliography

Knapp, Bettina. Andrée Chédid. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1984.

— NABIL BOUDRAA