| Sumario: | The role of aesthetics has been widely debated in the field of Maghrebi Literary Studies since its inception in the early 1960s. Francophone novels from the Maghreb are often called upon by publishers to serve as sociologically faithful reflections of North African society. At the same time, such works have been routinely criticized by scholars for their lack of literary artistry. The twenty-first century arrival of independent publishing houses in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia has altered the flow of cultural capital across the Mediterranean, with new centers of literary production shifting the landscape of French publishing. These local publishers afford Maghrebi writers the space in which to create narratives that complicate existing paradigms for postcolonial fiction. My paper addresses the relationship between literary aesthetics and national consciousness in recent novels from the catalogue of Éditions Barzakh, Algeria's most important independent publisher. I argue that Barzakh has expanded the horizon of possibility for theroman maghrébinin the twenty-first century by publishing texts that skirt the realist/formalist tug-of-war to which literatures from North Africa are so often subjected.
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