Your projects were different, but you shared the same venue and the same creative time. How did you make the most of this residency time? Were there any exchanges or resonances between your universes?

Ahmed El Falah: What was striking during the residency was the way in which our two universes, though very different, began to dialogue almost naturally. We were invited to take part in two literary events, one at the Musée Racine in La Ferté-Milon, the other at the Cité internationale de la langue française, and each time we read separate texts. Yet the themes resonated so clearly that the audience asked us if we'd coordinated in advance. It was as if our writing responded to each other, simply because we both speak of the human, its flaws, its differences.

Beyond these resonances, the residency above all offered me a real time to reflect on my project. I arrived with a manuscript I'd been working on for several years, convinced that I was on the right track. But the remoteness, the calm and the long time allowed me to step back and realize that I'd gone in a direction that wasn't working. So I took another look at the text, rethought the angle, redefined the character's trajectory.

What was striking during the residency was the way our two worlds, though very different, began to dialogue almost naturally.

Mustapha Benfodil : For me too, this residency was a real time to pause and refocus. My work as a reporter often takes me into complex terrain, and I needed a radical break from that rhythm to finally devote myself to this collection of short stories. Villers-Cotterêts was the ideal setting: the premises are impressive, the workspaces magnificent, and everything is designed to encourage concentration.

Meeting Ahmed very quickly removed any intimidation. Beyond the fact that our countries are close, I felt a real closeness in our paths and our ways of approaching the world, between literature and the performing arts. This triggered the writing almost immediately. The readings we were invited to attend from the very first week also played a role: this "good pressure", akin to that of journalism, forced me to get down to work straight away. Last but not least, the residency was nourished by some wonderful resonances: with Ahmed, whose sensitive themes echoed my own, but also with other artists, such as Wang Jing or the Vivant !e company, whose projects opened up new avenues of reflection.

During the residency, you were able to present your work at a café-lecture organized on September 27. How were your texts received? And what stage are you at now?

Ahmed El Falah: There were two very different moments for me. At the first literary event, having just arrived with Mustapha, I hadn't really started the writing process yet. So I chose to read an extract from my first novel, which had already been published. The text was very well received, but the exchanges focused mainly on our backgrounds: the audience was intrigued by the fact that we're not French and that we write in French. It's a subject that still holds a lot of fascination in France, even though the language now belongs to the entire French-speaking world.

The second event, on the other hand, was decisive: it was the first time I confronted my new text, still in progress, with an audience. The novel is harsh, dystopian and violent, and I wanted to gauge readers' reactions. I sensed that the words left no one indifferent: some were deeply offended, others immediately gripped, but in both cases, the text aroused the desire to know what happens next. I got a lot out of this exchange: the feedback was strong, sometimes very moving, and several people shared how much the theme echoed their own childhood.

Mustapha Benfodil : As Ahmed reminded us, we actually experienced three reading times: at the Racine museum, which is in La Ferté-Milon; during the café-lecture at the Cité internationale de la langue française, and then during a residency outing with the venue's team. When I arrived from Algiers, I had one concern: that my texts, written in dialectal or literary Arabic, would lose their audience. In fact, the opposite happened: readers fell naturally into the stories, the rhythm and the language. Their understanding of the overall meaning remained intact, and that was a great encouragement to me.

What struck me most were the reactions to the reading itself. I've been told how important it is to hear an author read his or her text, and this resonates deeply with the way I work. The sound dimension, the performance, the diction allow me to check the accuracy of a passage as much as the writing itself.

You're both multilingual, but write in French. Is this a matter of course? How do you relate to different languages?

Ahmed El Falah : For me, writing in French was an obvious choice. I discovered writing thanks to my French teacher: it was in this language that I first felt the urge to tell a story. I also read and write Arabic, both classical and dialectal, but I've never had a creative or literary relationship with the language. The impulse to write was born in French, and I naturally continue to develop my texts there. Driss Ksikes, a mutual friend of mine and Mustapha's, has a saying that I love: "My language is literature". I can totally relate. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what language tool I use: what matters to me is the story I'm telling. My real language is literature itself.

Mustapha Benfodil : I grew up in a naturally trilingual environment: Kabyle at home, Arabic in the street and French at school. I belong to a generation that spent a large part of its schooling in French, with many teachers still cooperating from France. As my first readings were also in French, writing in French came almost spontaneously. Over time, however, I felt the need to turn more to Arabic. I began by translating some of my plays, then writing poetry in that language. In fact, my French is full of Arabic expressions, whether dialect or literary Arabic. Today, I even have a project to write a novel entirely in Arabic, as a way of reconnecting with a part of my identity that I had perhaps put aside, but also to address generations that have a different relationship with French.

My French is laced with many Arabic expressions, whether dialect or literary Arabic. Today, I even have plans to write a novel entirely in Arabic.

Livres des deux rives relies on cooperative actions around books to encourage dialogue between civil societies on the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean. How is the book sector faring in Algeria and Morocco?

Ahmed El Falah: To be honest, the book sector is not doing very well. This is true in many parts of the world, but in Morocco, the situation is particularly complicated. Reading levels are still very low: it's estimated that the average person reads four minutes a year, which is derisory. This is due to a number of factors, starting with the price of books, which is considerably higher than in France, since most books are imported and the major French publishing houses dominate the market. The local book chain, too, is fragile: Moroccan publishers struggle to find their place and survive in this context of unbalanced competition. And, more generally, there is no real strong public policy in favor of reading or access to books from school onwards, which hampers the emergence of a real readership. In fact, there's something of a paradox: Rabat will be designated Book Capital in 2026, but this international recognition contrasts with the reality of an under-financed sector, whose budgets are shrinking year on year. This shows that much remains to be done to ensure that books truly occupy the place they deserve in society.

Mustapha Benfodil : In Algeria, the book sector still bears the traces of an eventful history. For a long time, it was entirely state-controlled, until the economic opening of the late 1980s. No sooner had the first private publishing houses begun to emerge than the country plunged into the Black Decade: a period of extreme violence that hit the entire book chain hard, with assassinations, attacks and a climate of terror. It was only in the early 2000s, thanks to high oil revenues, that the sector was able to recover. The Ministry of Culture then massively supported private publishers, leading to a veritable flowering of publishing houses, sometimes also opportunistic initiatives, but which energized the landscape. Since 2014, the situation has deteriorated: economic crisis, pandemic, closure of many bookshops, fragile publishers, explosion in the price of paper... Print runs have fallen and production has contracted. Even today, the book ecosystem remains weakened, all the more so for the lack of a genuine, clear public policy to accompany the sector, support distribution and make books accessible to as many people as possible.