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 became the first Algerian and Muslim woman to be educated at France’s most elite schools, attending 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.
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
Algerian novelist Assia Djebar was repeatedly a favourite to win a Nobel Prize in Literature, yet over a career of more than fifty years, she never did. In 2013, Le Figaro put the question of “why not?“ to French industry professionals. The answers were all deeply unsatisfying, and one in particular was a vague “not universal enough,” despite Djebar’s books having been translated into twenty-three languages and studied in universities around the world. The same applies to the criticisms that the Algerian author wrote “for the French,” which may have contributed to the lack of support from her home country of Algeria, which another suggested as a factor. One critiqued Djebar writing in French rather than her mother tongue of Arabic, yet Joseph Brodsky won for a collection of poems and essays in both his native Russian and English. None seemed willing to acknowledge the obvious: Djebar was an Arab woman from a non-Western country, writing about women and expressing both anti-patriarchal and anti-colonialist views. The only Arab women to win in any category, as of 2023, were Peace Prize winners Tawakkol Karman, Malala Yousafzai, Narges Mohammadi and Nadia Murad. In more than 120 years and out of 965 individuals, only sixty-four women have won Nobel Prizes in any category, and only thirteen of those were women of colour, as of the 2023 awards. African-American poet Toni Morrison was the only woman of colour to have won for Literature until she was joined by South Korean poet Han Kang in 2024.