Born: 30 June 1936, Algeria
Died: 6 February 2015
Country most active: International
Also known as: Fatima-Zehra Imalayen, آسيا جبار
Best known by her pen name Assia Djebar, Fatima-Zohra Imalayen was an Algerian feminist novelist, translator and filmmaker, considered one of North Africa’s most influential writers. Her work primarily deals with obstacles women face, and 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 promoted reform for Islam across the Arab world, particularly advocating for increased rights for women.
Born in Algeria of Chenouas Berber origin, she grew up in the small seaport village of Cherchell, later attending a Quranic private boarding school in Blida, where she was one of only two female students. At Collège de Blida in Algiers, she was the only Muslim in her class. In 1955, she become the first Algerian and Muslim woman to be educated at France’s most elite schools, attending the.the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles. Although her studies were interrupted by the Algerian War, she later continued her education in Tunis.
In 1957, she published her first novel, La Soif (“The Thirst”) under the name Assia Djebar, followed by Les Impatients in 1958, Les Enfants du Nouveau Monde in 1962 and Les Alouettes Naïves in 1967. In 1985, she published L’Amour, la fantasia (translated as Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade), 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.” She also directed films, including The Zerda and the Songs of Forgetting (1983), La nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua (1982) and Double je (2002).
Djebar taught at the University of Rabat in Morocco (1959–1962), returning to Algeria in 1962 to work at the University of Algiers where she was made the department head for the French section. She lived in Paris from 1965 to 1974 before returning to Algeria again. She remarried in 1980 to Algerian poet Malek Alloula; they lived in Paris, where she had a research appointment at the Algerian Cultural Center. From 1997 to 2001, Djebar served as director for the Center of French and Francophone Studies at Louisiana State University.
Djebar won numerous awards, including: the Franco-Arab Friendship Prize, for L’Amour la Fantasia (1985); the Neustadt International Prize for Literature for her contribution to world literature (1996); the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize (1997); the International Prize of Palmi (1998) and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (2000). She was repeatedly named as a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. On 16 June 2005, she became the first writer from North Africa, and the fifth woman, elected to the Académie française.