The international books fairs taking place in almost all Arab countries, due to their scale, historical and geopolitical character, reflect matters of national interest, such as regional power balances. Censorship and state control is one of the biggest problems in those grand events, in which millions are spend yearly, in order for each country to set itself as a cultural power in the region.

The mere narration of these stories reflects the Palestinians’ rigid persistence of memory -to re-call and to remember- given that the past can conceal the present and disregard the future. Elias Khoury’s stories explain why Palestinians have either the need or are forced to remember; for some Palestinians, Palestine is more the actual memory of it rather than the land. So keeping Palestine alive in their memory is keeping themselves alive. The stories unfold the part of history which has never been written, trapped with emotions that conflict creates which encapsulate and explain today’s’ tart reality. Reminiscence is a bittersweet comfort and nostalgia has become part of the Palestinian identity in a struggle to survive.

Boualem Sansal belongs to a generation of Algerian writers who, three decades after Algerian Independence, denounce the drift of the sociopolitical and economic system in their country that  “leaves less and less room for illusions” (Bonn, et al.: 1997 : 206). Gradually, for certain authors, who are steadily growing in number, “referential writing is supplanting formalism” as Jean-Marc Moura noted (2007: 155). The bloody current topicality of the ‘90s thus inspired Algerian authors like Rachid Mimouni and Rachid Boudjedra to courageously bear witness in a literature firmly rooted in reality. By the last decade of the 20th century, the country had ceased being a model of third-world socialism, nationalism had eroded and the absence of hope compelled increasingly more members of the younger generation to go into self-imposed exile.