Jean-Michel Guirao et La Revue SIMOUN

SIMOUN was a literary journal founded in Oran, Algeria in 1952 by a group of young writers committed to giving voice to a new Algerian literature — one that drew on the multicultural reality of colonial Algeria while anticipating the cultural independence of the nation to come. Running until 1963, SIMOUN published early work by many writers who would go on to define Maghrebian literature in French.

This double issue of CELAAN Review examines the history and legacy of SIMOUN through the perspective of Jean-Michel Guirao, one of its founding editors, now among the last surviving witnesses to that remarkable literary moment. The issue includes Guirao's personal account of the journal's founding and editorial history, a selection of texts originally published in SIMOUN, and critical essays situating the journal within the broader context of Algerian literary history and the literature of decolonization.

The issue serves both as an act of literary archaeology — recovering a largely forgotten journal for contemporary readers — and as a meditation on the complex cultural politics of writing in French in colonial and post-independence Algeria.