Born to Algerian immigrant parents. Professor of 20th-century French literature and literature from the Maghreb, at Yale University. He holds a doctorate from France and a PhD from the United States. In his scholarly research he works on issues pertaining to aesthetic as well as cultural representations between France and the Maghreb. He investigates North-African francophone literature and culture, and wrote L’Idéologie africaine américaine à travers l’oeuvre romanesque de Toni Morrison (1999). He is currently working on Of Lesser Truth: Orientalism, France and the Maghreb. [110609]