Between Transmission and Silence: Recovering Harki Memories in The Art of Losing

Abstract

Alice Zeniter’s 2017 novel The Art of Losing, translated recently by Frank Wynne from French to English, explores how buried histories resurface and haunt generations to come, despite national efforts to ignore, if not minimalize, the enduring impacts of colonialism, independence struggles and exile. Set in contemporary France in the wake of the 2015 terrorist attacks, and loosely inspired by Zeniter’s own family history, the book follows Naïma, a young woman of Algerian decent who grapples with a largely unknown and misconstrued harki heritage. Drawing on Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory, this article investigates intergenerational transmission of memory, trauma, and silence around themes such as war, exile and integration.