Nationality Algeria Role Novelist | Name Assia Djebar Subject Feminism | |
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Born Fatima-Zohra Imalayen30 June 1936Cherchell, Algeria ( 1936-06-30 ) Alma mater Ecole normale superieure Notable works La soif, Les impatients, Les enfants du Nouveau monde, Les alouettes naives Movies Zerda And The Songs Of Forgetting Books Women of Algiers in Their Apa, L' amour - la fantasia, Fantasia - an Algerian cavalcade, Far from Medina, A sister to Scheherazade Similar People Malek Alloula, Fatema Mernissi, Boualem Sansal | ||
Education Ecole Normale Superieure | ||
Le cercle des amis d assia djebar conf rence de presse a tizi ouzou
Fatima-Zohra Imalayen (30 June 1936 – 6 February 2015), known by her pen name Assia Djebar (Arabic: آسيا جبار) 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." 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.
Contents
- Le cercle des amis d assia djebar conf rence de presse a tizi ouzou
- Assia djebar dies aged 78
- Early life
- Career
- Awards
- Works
- Cinema
- References
Assia djebar dies aged 78
Early life
Djebar was born Fatima-Zohra Imalayen on 30 June 1936, to Tahar Imalhayène and Bahia Sahraoui into a Berber family. She was raised in Cherchell, a small seaport village near Algiers in the Province of Aïn Defla. Djebar's father was an educator, teaching the French language at Mouzaïaville dans la Mitidja, a primary school she attended. Later, Djebar attend 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. She attended the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles in 1955, thus becoming the first Algerian and Muslim woman to be educated at France's most elite schools. but her studies was interrupted by the Algerian War. She later went on to continue her education in Tunis.
Career
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 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 Rabat (1959-1962) and then at University of Algiers.
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 and remarried in 1980, to the Algerian poet Malek Alloula. The couple lived in Paris, France.
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."
In 2005, Djebar was accepted into the Académie française, a prestigious institution tasked with guarding the heritage of the French language. She was the first writer from North Africa to be elected to the organization.
She was a Silver Chair professor of Francophone literature at New York University.
Djebar died in February 2015, aged 78.
Awards
In 1996, Djebar won the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature for her contribution to world literature. The following year, she took home the Yourcenar Prize. In 2000, she won the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.