Assia Djebar

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Assia Djebar
École Normale Supérieure
SubjectFeminism
Notable works
  • La soif
  • Les impatients
  • Les enfants du nouveau monde
  • Les alouettes naïves
Notable awards
Signature

Fatima-Zohra Imalayen (

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]

Early life

Fatima-Zehra Imalayen or Djebbar was born on 30 June 1936 in Cherchell, Algeria, to Tahar Imalhayène and Bahia Sahraoui, a family of Chenouas Berber origin.[3] She was raised in Cherchell, a small seaport village near Algiers in the Province of Aïn Defla. Djebar's father taught French at Mouzaïaville, a primary school she attended. Later, Djebar attended a Quranic private boarding school in Blida, where she was one of only two girls. She studied at Collège de Blida, a high school in Algiers, where she was the only Muslim in her class.[4] She attended the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles in 1955, becoming the first Algerian and Muslim woman to be educated at France's most elite schools.[5] Her studies were interrupted by the Algerian War, but she later continued her education in Tunis.[6]

Career

In 1957, she chose the pen name Assia Djebar for the publication of her first novel, La Soif ("The Thirst"). Another book, Les Impatients, followed the next year. Also in 1958, she and Ahmed Ould-Rouïs began a marriage that would eventually end in divorce. Djebar taught at the

University of Algiers where she was made the department head for the French section.[7][8]

In 1962, Djebar returned to Algeria and published Les Enfants du Nouveau Monde, and followed that in 1967 with Les Alouettes Naïves. She lived in Paris between 1965 and 1974 before returning to Algeria again. She remarried in 1980 to the Algerian poet Malek Alloula. The couple lived in Paris, where she had a research appointment at the Algerian Cultural Center.[9]

In 1997, Djebar became the director for the Center of French and Francophone Studies at Louisiana State University. She held that position until 2001.[10] In 1985, Djebar published L'Amour, la fantasia (translated as Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade, Heinemann, 1993), in which she "repeatedly states her ambivalence about language, about her identification as a Western-educated, Algerian, feminist, Muslim intellectual, about her role as spokesperson for Algerian women as well as for women in general."[11]

In 2005, Djebar was elected to France's foremost literary institution, the

Académie française, an institution tasked with guarding the heritage of the French language and whose members, known as the "immortals", are chosen for life. She was the first writer from North Africa to be elected to the organization.[12] and the fifth woman to join the academy.[13] Djebar was a Silver Chair professor of Francophone literature at New York University.[8]

Djebar was known as a voice of reform for Islam across the Arab world, especially in the field of advocating for increased rights for women.[5]

Djebar died in February 2015, aged 78 in Paris, France.[7][14]

Awards

In 1985, she won the Franco-Arab Friendship Prize, for L'Amour la Fantasia.[15]

In 1996, Djebar won the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature for her contribution to world literature.[16]

The following year, she won the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize.[15]

In 1998, she won the International Prize of Palmi.[15]

In 2000, she won the

Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.[15]

Tribute

On 30 June 2017,

Arab World.[17]

Works

Cinema

References

  1. doi:10.1093/fs/knm041
    .
  2. ^ Alison Flood, "Assia Djebar, Algerian novelist, dies aged 78", The Guardian, 9 February 2015.
  3. ISBN 9782878544879
    .
  4. ^ a b "Assia Djebar", Voices from the Gaps, University of Minnesota. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
  5. ^ a b "Assia Djebar: Algeria's 'immortal' literary hero". Al Jazeera. 30 June 2017.
  6. ISBN 9780810879195
    .
  7. ^ a b "Assia Djebar | Algerian writer and filmmaker". 27 February 2024.
  8. ^
    ISBN 978-1-135-45564-4
    .
  9. ^ Mildred P. Mortimer (1988). Assia Djebar. CELFAN Editions. p. 7.
  10. ^ "History of the Center | Center for French and Francophone Studies at LSU". www.lsu.edu. Retrieved 23 May 2023.
  11. JSTOR 40150357
    .
  12. ^ MAÏA de la BAUME, "Assia Djebar, Novelist Who Wrote About Oppression of Arab Women, Dies at 78", The New York Times, 13 February 2015.
  13. ^ Jeune Afrique. Cidcom/Le Groupe Jeune Afrique. 2006. p. 16.
  14. ^ "Assia Djebar décédée : Perte d'une intellectuelle majeure". El Watan. 7 February 2015. Retrieved 7 February 2015. (in French)
  15. ^
    ISBN 9782840505068
    .
  16. ^ "1996 Neustadt Prize Laureate – Assia Djebar". World Literature Today. 28 March 2012. Retrieved 29 June 2018.
  17. ^ "Assia Djebar's 81st Birthday". 30 June 2017. Retrieved 27 December 2017.

Further reading

  • Hiddleston, Jane. Assia Djebar: Out of Algeria. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006.
  • Ivantcheva-Merjanska, Irene. Ecrire dans la langue de l'autre. Assia Djebar et Julia Kristeva. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2015.
  • Merini, Rafika. Two Major Francophone Women Writers, Assia Djébar and Leila Sebbar: A Thematic Study of Their Works. New York: P. Lang, 1999.
  • Mortimer, Mildred P. Assia Djebar. Philadelphia: CELFAN Editions, 1988.
  • Murray, Jenny. Remembering the (post)colonial Self: Memory and Identity in the Novels of Assia Djebar. Bern: Peter Lang, 2008.
  • O'Riley, Michael F. Postcolonial Haunting and Victimization: Assia Djebar's New Novels. New York: Peter Lang, 2007.
  • Rahman, Najat. Literary Disinheritance: The Writing of Home in the Work of Mahmoud Darwish and Assia Djebar. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008.
  • Ringrose, Priscilla. Assia Djebar: In Dialogue with Feminisms. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006.
  • Thiel, Veronika. Assia Djebar. La polyphonie comme principe générateur de ses textes Vienna: Praesens, 2005.
  • Thiel, Veronika. Une voix, ce n’est pas assez... La narration multiple dans trois romans francophones des années 1980. Le Temps de Tamango de Boubacar B. Diop, L’Amour, la fantasia d’Assia Djebar et Solibo Magnifique de Patrick Chamoiseau. PHD thesis, Vienna University, 2011

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Assia Djebar.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Assia_Djebar&oldid=1219271477"