Assia Djebar - Algerian novelist (3 books)

ASSIA DJEBAR is the pen name of Fatima-Zohra Imalayen (b. 1936), an Algerian novelist, translator and filmmaker, and considered to be one of North Africa's pre-eminent and most influential writers. She won the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1996 for her contribution to world literature, the Yourcenar Prize (1997) and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (2000). She was elected to the Académie française on 16 June 2005, the first writer from the Maghreb to achieve such recognition. Djebar is reputed to be a leading candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

CHILDREN OF THE NEW WORLD (1962) was written following Djebar's own involvement in the Algerian resistance to colonial French rule. It recounts the interlocking lives of women in a rural Algerian town who find themselves joined in solidarity and empower each other to engage in the fight for independence. Narrating the resistance movement from a variety of perspectives -- from those of traditional wives to liberated students to political organizers -- Djebar powerfully depicts the circumstances that drive oppressed communities to violence and simultaneously reveals the tragic costs of war.

In FANTASIA (1985), Djebar intertwines the history of her native Algeria with episodes from the life of a young girl in a story stretching from the French conquest in 1830 to the War of Liberation of the 1950s. The girl, growing up in the old Roman coastal town of Cherchel, sees her life in contrast to that of a neighboring French family, and yearns for more than law and tradition allow her to experience. Headstrong and passionate, she escapes from the cloistered life of her family to join her brother in the maquis' fight against French domination. Djebar's exceptional descriptive powers bring to life the experiences of girls and women caught up in the dual struggle for independence -- both their own and Algeria's.

SO VAST THE PRISON (1995) is the double-threaded story of a modern, educated Algerian woman existing in a man's society, and, not surprisingly, living a life of contradictions. These contradictions are played out against the bloody history of Carthage, a great civilization the Berbers were once compared to, and makes it both a tribute to the loss of Berber culture and a meeting-point of culture and language. As the story of one woman's experience in Algeria, it is a private tale, but one embedded in a vast history.

A radically singular voice in the world of literature, Djebar's work ultimately reaches beyond the particulars of Algeria to embrace, in stark yet sensuous language, the universal themes of violence, intimacy, ostracism, victimization, and exile.


The following books are in PDF format unless otherwise noted:

* CHILDREN OF THE NEW WORLD: A Novel of the Algerian War (Feminist Press at CUNY, 2005). Translated by Marjolijn de Jager with an Afterword by Clarisse Zimra.

* FANTASIA: An Algerian Cavalcade (Heinemann, 1993). Translated by Dorothy S. Blair.

* SO VAST THE PRISON (Seven Stories, 1999). Translated by Betsy Wing. -- ePUB + MOBI