Mahmoud El Materi: Pionnier de La Tunisie Moderne

After lengthy and painstaking research conducted in familial and national archives, Anissa El Materi Hached paints an intimate and detailed portrait of one of modern Tunisia’s pioneers – the renowned leader in Tunisia’s fight for independence and the first President of the Neo-Destour Party, Dr. Mahmoud El Materi. As a military man and politically engaged individual destined from his early years to a career in medicine, Mahmoud El Materi played a role in the lives of all those close to him that was no less imposing than the one which he would play in 20th-century Tunisian history. His daughter’s testimony, through “snapshot” comments about a family life often disrupted by the demands of politics suddenly brings us much closer to this man than to the one we see simultaneously caught up in his larger destiny.Whether discussing Tunis after the Liberation, the reform undertaken by the initiators of the fight for independence, the obstacles which they immediately had to confront, or the circumstances surrounding the disagreements with Bourguiba and his decision not to withdraw from politics, the inescapable clarifications which this book provides are required reading for anyone wishing to understand a special era and its protagonists.