Assia Djebar

Assia Djebar is the pen name of Fatima-Zohra Imalayen. Assia Djebar was born on the 4^th August 1936. She is an Algerian novelist, filmmaker and a translator. Most of the works she did tackled the issues that are faced by the women of the society. Assia Djebar is noted for the feminist stance she holds.

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Assia Djebar is seen go be one of the North Africa’s pre-eminent and most influential writers. On the 16^th June 2005, she was elected to the Académie française, and she became the first writer from Maghreb to gain recognition like that. Fall the body of her work; she was given the award of the year 1996 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Early Life and Career

Assia Djebar was born on the 4^th August 1936 as Fatima-Zohra Imalayen to the family of Tahar Imalhayene, a Berber speaking family. She was brought up in Cherchell, a small seaport village that is beside Algiers in the region of Ain Defla. Her father was an educator, who was teaching the French language at the Mouzaïaville dans la Mitidja, and that was the primary school she attended. Assia Djebar later attended a Quranic private boarding school in Blida, and it was there that she was one of the two girls in the school. She studied at the College de Blida, which is a high school in Algiers, and she was the only Muslim in her class.

In the year 1957, Assia Djebar published her first novel called La Soif, with the fear of getting an approval from her father she published the book with the pen name, Assia Djebar. The next book she published was named Les Impatient, which she published in the next year. In the year 1958, she started a marriage with Ahmed Ould and the marriage ended in divorce.

Awards

In the year 1996, Assia Djebar won the prestigious Neusadt International Prize for Literature for the contribution she made to the world of literature. The next year, she won the Yourcenar Prize. In the year 2000, she was the winner of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.

Works

Ø  La Soif, 1957 (English: The Mischief)

Ø  Les impatients, 1958

Ø  Les Enfants du Nouveau Monde, 1962 (English: Children of the New World)

Ø  Les Alouettes naïves, 1967

Ø  Poème pour une algérie heureuse, 1969

Ø  Rouge l'aube

Ø  L'Amour, la fantasia, 1985 (English: Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade)

Ø  Ombre sultane 1987 (English: A Sister to Scheherazade)

Ø  Loin de Médine, (English: Far from Medina)

Ø  Vaste est la prison, 1995 (English: So Vast the Prison)

Ø  Le blanc de l'Algérie, 1996 (English: Algerian White)

Ø  Oran, langue morte, 1997 (English: The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry: Algerian Stories)

Ø  Les Nuits de Strasbourg, 1997

Ø  Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement (English: Women of Algiers in Their Apartment)

Ø  La femme sans sépulture, 2002

Ø  La disparition de la langue française, 2003

Ø  Nulle part dans la maison de mon père, 2008

Cinema

Ø  La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua, 1977

Ø  La Zerda ou les chants de l'oubli, 1979