Wasini Al-A’raj (born August 8, 1954 in the border village of Sidi Boujnane – Tlemcen) is an Algerian academic and novelist. He currently holds a chair at the Central University of Algiers and the Sorbonne University in Paris. He is considered one of the most important novelistic voices in the Arab world.
Unlike the founding generation that preceded him, the works of Wasini, who writes in both Arabic and French, belong to the new school, which does not settle on a single, fixed form but rather constantly seeks new and vibrant ways of expression through serious work on language and shaking its certainties. Language, in this sense, is not a ready-made, stable given, but rather a constant and ongoing search.
Wasini’s innovative experimental power is clearly demonstrated in his novel, which has sparked considerable critical controversy and is currently scheduled in many universities around the world: The Thousand and Seventh Night, with its two parts: The Sands of the Maya and The Eastern Manuscript. He engaged in dialogue with the Arabian Nights, not from a position of repeating history and restoring the text, but rather from an obsession with the desire to recover lost narrative traditions and understand their internal systems that shaped the Arab imagination in its richness and great openness.