“Prélude,” Abishag

Poet, editor, and novelist Sadia Lévy was born in Oran, Algeria, into a family with roots in Gibraltar. He studied at the École de sciences politique in Paris, where he was part of a literary circle which included the poets Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob. In addition to French, Lévy was fluent in Hebrew and the Judeo-Maghrebi dialects of Spanish and Arabic. With Robert Randau, head of the Algerian literary movement, Levy wrote Rabbin (1896), one of the first novels describing the daily lives and customs of Jews in North Africa. Because of the Vichy regime’s antisemitic laws, his most important work, Abishag, remained unpublished until after his death.