Elaine Mokhtefi, joined in conversation by Adam Shatz and Amara Lakhous, moderated by Madeleine Dobie
Elaine Mokhtefi is an American writer and painter who worked in the Algerian National Liberation Front’s New York office during the Algerian war for independence. She lived in Algiers from 1962 to 1974 and was one of the organizers of the First Pan-African Cultural Festival of summer 1969. She was instrumental in the establishment of the International Section of the Black Panther Party in Algiers.
Elaine will speak about her own experience and about that of her husband, Mokhtar Mokhtefi, a member of the Signal Corps of the Algerian Liberation Army. Mokhtar Mokhtefi later became a writer of nonfiction on the Arab world and North Africa. He died in New York City in 2015. His recently published memoir J’étais français-musulman is a vibrant, elucidating account of growing up in a ‘village de colonisation’, of schooling in a French lycée, his awakening to the politics of independence, and his commitment to Algeria’s freedom. It is a frank and sometimes controversial account of revolutionary Algeria.
She will be joined by Adam Shatz, a writer at the London Review of Books and a fellow in residence at the New York Institute for the Humanities, and by the Algerian-Italian novelist Amara Lakhous.
