Assia Djebar

Assia Djebar
Djebar in 1992
Djebar in 1992
BornFatima-Zohra Imalayen
(1936-06-30)30 June 1936
Cherchell, Colonial Algeria
Died6 February 2015(2015-02-06) (aged 78)
Paris, France
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • essayist
  • professor
Alma materÉcole Normale Supérieure
SubjectFeminism
Notable works
  • La soif
  • Les impatients
  • Les enfants du nouveau monde
  • Les alouettes naïves
Notable awards
Signature

Fatima-Zohra Imalayen (Arabic: فاطمة الزهراء إيمالاين‎; 30 June 1936 – 6 February 2015), known by her pen name Assia Djebar (Arabic: آسيا جبار), was an Algerian novelist, translator and filmmaker. Most of her works deal with obstacles faced by women, and she is noted for her feminist stance. She is "frequently associated with women's writing movements, her novels are clearly focused on the creation of a genealogy of Algerian women, and her political stance is virulently anti-patriarchal as much as it is anti-colonial."[1] Djebar is considered to be one of North Africa's pre-eminent and most influential writers. She was elected to the Académie française on 16 June 2005, the first writer from the Maghreb to achieve such recognition. For the entire body of her work she was awarded the 1996 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. She was often named as a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature.[2]

  1. ^ Hiddleston, Jane. "Assia Djebar: In Dialogue with Feminisms (review)". French Studies: A Quarterly Review. 61 (2): 248–9. doi:10.1093/fs/knm041.
  2. ^ Alison Flood, "Assia Djebar, Algerian novelist, dies aged 78", The Guardian, 9 February 2015.