Biography
Assia Djebar was born 30 June 1936 in Cherchell, is an Algerian
novelist, translator and filmmaker. Assia Djebar is the pen-name
of Fatima-Zohra Imalayen Most of her works deal with the obstacles
faced by women, and she is noted for her feminist stance. Djebar
is considered to be one of North Africa's most famous and influential
writers, and was elected to the Académie française on 16 June, 2005,
the first writer from the Maghreb to achieve such recognition
She attended the primary school where her father taught French, and attended
secondary school elsewhere in Algeria. In 1955, she was the first Algerian woman
to be accepted at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. In 1957, she published
her first novel, La Soif (The Thirst). (Fearing her father's disapproval, she
had it published under the pen name Assia Djebar.) Another, Les Impatients, followed
the next year. Also in 1958, she married Ahmed Ould-Rouïs, a marriage that eventually
ended in divorce.
In 1962 Djebar published Les Enfants du Nouveau Monde, and in 1967 Les Alouettes
Naïves. She remarried in 1980, to the Algerian poet Malek Alloula; they live
in Paris.
In 1996 she won the prestigious Neustadt Prize for Contribution to World Literature,
and the next year, the Yourcenar Prize.
Djebar is currently a professor of Francophone literature at NYU. She
has consistently been nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature over
the past several years.
Bibliography
- La Soif, 1957
- Les impatients, 1958
- Les Enfants du Nouveau Monde, 1962
- Les Alouettes naïves, 1967
- Poème pour une algérie heureuse, 1969
- Rouge l'aube
- L'Amour, la fantasia, 1985
- Ombre sultane 1987
- Loin de Médine, 1991
- Vaste est la prison, 1995
- Le blanc de l'Algérie, 1996
- Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement, 2002
- La femme sans sépulture, 2002La disparition de la langue française,
2003
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Algeria