Anna
Gréki (1931-66) was a French Algerian poet, a Feminist and Communist involved in the Algerian struggle for
independence. Born Colette
Anna Grégoire, she grew up in a small town in the Aurès mountains, whose landscape and culture formed the
living core of her poetry. A student at the Sorbonne, she left Paris to join the underground Parti Communiste Algérien and the struggle against the French occupation. She was arrested
and imprisoned in the infamous Barberousse prison in Algiers, during which time she wrote her first
collection, which was smuggled out by a friend and published in Tunisia in
1963. Transferred to a prison camp and
deported, she returned to Algeria after independence to complete her studies
and found work as a teacher. She died in
childbirth at the age of 34.
The Streets of Algiers is the first full English
translation of her second collection, Temps forts, published posthumously
in 1966, remarkable for its unforgiving clarity, delicate sensuality and formal
accomplishment, and its ability to speak words of courage from the depths of
great suffering.