Assia Djebar (1936–2015)
Author of Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
About the Author
Assia Djebar was born Fatima-Zohra Imalayan in Cherchell, Algeria on June 30, 1936. She read history at the Sorbonne in Paris, and, after teaching at Tunis and Rabat universities, emigrated to France with her husband and children. Her first novel, La Soif (The Mischief), was published in 1957. She show more wrote more than 15 novels during her lifetime including Algerian White, So Vast the Prison, The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry, and The Children of the New World. She was also a playwright and filmmaker. In 2005, she became the fifth woman to be elected to the Académie Française. She received numerous awards for her work including the International Prize of Palmi, the Peace Prize of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the International Critics' Prize at the Venice Biennale for the film La Nouba des Femmes du Mont Chenoua, and the International Literary Neustadt Prize. She died on February 7, 2015 at the age of 78. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Michel-Georges Bernard
Series
Works by Assia Djebar
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Imalayen, Fatima-Zohra
- Other names
- آسيا جبار
- Birthdate
- 1936-06-30
- Date of death
- 2015-02-06
- Gender
- female
- Education
- École Normale Supérieure (Sèvres)
The Sorbonne
Paul Valéry University, Montpellier III - Occupations
- university professor
novelist
filmmaker
playwright
poet
university professor (show all 7)
translator - Organizations
- New York University
- Awards and honors
- Neustadt International Prize for Literature (1996)
Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (2000)
Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres
Académie française (2005) - Relationships
- Alloula, Malek (spouse)
- Short biography
- Assia Djebar was the pen name of Fatma-Zohra Imalhayène, born to a Berber family in Cherchell, Algeria. She was educated in Algeria and then at the elite École normale supérieure de jeunes filles in France. She earned a B.A. at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1956 and a Ph.D. at Paul Valéry University, Montpellier III in 1999. Her first novel, La Soif (The Mischief), was published in 1957, followed by Les Impatients (The Impatient Ones, 1958). She taught history at the University of Rabat and the University of Algiers, and also was a filmmaker, poet, and playwright. She was married and divorced twice, including to Walid Garn, with whom she collaborated on the 1969 play Rouge L’Aube (Red Dawn). Other works included Les Enfants du nouveau monde (Children of the New World, 1962), Les Alouettes naïves (The Naive Larks, 1967), Poèmes pour l’Algérie heureuse (Poems for a Happy Algeria, 1969), Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement (Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, 1980), L’Amour, la fantasia (Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade, 1985), Ombre sultane (A Sister to Scheherazade, 1987), and Vaste est la prison (So Vast the Prison, 1994), as well as the semi-autobiographical Le Blanc de l’Algérie (Algerian White, 1995). She moved to the USA in 1995 and taught French literature at Louisiana State University and at New York University. In 2005, she was elected to the Académie française, the fifth woman and the first writer from North Africa to be elected.
- Nationality
- Algeria
France - Birthplace
- Cherchell, Algeria
- Places of residence
- Cherchell, Algeria
Mouzaïaville, Algeria
Blida, Algeria
Paris, France
Rabat, Morocco
New York, USA (show all 7)
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA - Place of death
- Paris, France
Members
Reviews
If I had to describe this book in a single word, it would be "gaze." Assia Djebar, a filmmaker as well as writer, is always aware of sightlines and who is gazing at whom. Women, whose gaze is restricted to a slot through their veils, are like camera lenses, with an intense, directed focus, but one that is too frequently shuttered. Perpetually aware lest they fall under a man's gaze, the women try to remain invisible. Yet there are strong women in the book, who defy their imposed limits, show more often through language: Zoraide, who passes notes to the Captive Captain in [Don Quixote]; Tin Hinan, mother of the Tuareg, who brought the Berber alphabet to the desert; the narrator/author's own writing.
The book is divided into four parts, each with a very distinct style. Part 1, What is Erased in the Heart, is an emotional, non-linear account of the narrator/author's platonic love affair with the younger man she calls The Beloved. The narrator says that, "It is not fiction I desire. I am not driven to unfurl a love story of inexhaustible arabesques," and yet that describes it perfectly. Part 2, Erased in Stone, is the story of the discovery by Europeans of the stele at Dougga, written in both Punic and a Berber alphabet. Each chapter in this section is a short biography of one of the men who was instrumental in bringing the knowledge to Europe that the Berbers had had a written language much longer than scholars knew. Part 3, A Silent Desire, alternates chapters that describe the life of the narrator/author's grandmother and mother, with chapters about making her first film, "The Arable Woman." The title of the film is taken from an Arabic lament, recited at the death of her mother's sister:
O my other self, my shadow, no one so like me,
You are gone, you have deserted me, left me arable,
Your pain, a plowshare, turned me over and seeded me with tears.
Part 4, The Blood of Writing, is short, almost an essay, on writing and Algeria's bloody history.
I had a hard time getting through the first part. I understood that it represented "the daily wretchedness of the women of this city of invisible lusts and repression," but the swirl of emotions was hard to navigate. I much preferred the sections on the history of the language and her family history. It is hard to say how much of the novel is fiction, clearly much of it is about her and her family. It is, perhaps, of a shared style with the oral tradition she describes, of illiterate women whose memories are a history rarely shared. A history told in the female voice, outside the scope of the scribes and clerks who record men's history, less factual and more impressionistic.
Edited to fix formatting show less
The book is divided into four parts, each with a very distinct style. Part 1, What is Erased in the Heart, is an emotional, non-linear account of the narrator/author's platonic love affair with the younger man she calls The Beloved. The narrator says that, "It is not fiction I desire. I am not driven to unfurl a love story of inexhaustible arabesques," and yet that describes it perfectly. Part 2, Erased in Stone, is the story of the discovery by Europeans of the stele at Dougga, written in both Punic and a Berber alphabet. Each chapter in this section is a short biography of one of the men who was instrumental in bringing the knowledge to Europe that the Berbers had had a written language much longer than scholars knew. Part 3, A Silent Desire, alternates chapters that describe the life of the narrator/author's grandmother and mother, with chapters about making her first film, "The Arable Woman." The title of the film is taken from an Arabic lament, recited at the death of her mother's sister:
O my other self, my shadow, no one so like me,
You are gone, you have deserted me, left me arable,
Your pain, a plowshare, turned me over and seeded me with tears.
Part 4, The Blood of Writing, is short, almost an essay, on writing and Algeria's bloody history.
I had a hard time getting through the first part. I understood that it represented "the daily wretchedness of the women of this city of invisible lusts and repression," but the swirl of emotions was hard to navigate. I much preferred the sections on the history of the language and her family history. It is hard to say how much of the novel is fiction, clearly much of it is about her and her family. It is, perhaps, of a shared style with the oral tradition she describes, of illiterate women whose memories are a history rarely shared. A history told in the female voice, outside the scope of the scribes and clerks who record men's history, less factual and more impressionistic.
Edited to fix formatting show less
Assia Djebar wants you to write a term paper about her book. She wants you to deploy trendy crit theory terminology to unpack her overtly symbolic and extremely self-aware meta-narrative of historical readings, elided autobiography and tiresome, italicized hinge pieces. But she also wants you to learn about Algerian history, about life as an Arab woman and about the torturous process of forging an identity in the liminal space between a conquering and a conquered nation. Unfortunately, she show more has little faith in her readers and frequently interprets her own book to be sure that everyone understands how fractured she is, what “the other” has done, on how many levels the metaphor of being veiled can operate, or what a compromise it entails that she is writing in French.
When Djebar gives voice to the Algerian women who aided the native resistance or when she frames the observations of victorious Frenchmen, she shares memorable and moving stories. Her offering of Algeria’s history is absorbable and relevant, knit from carefully chosen details that contrast each other quite appropriately (for instance, the Frenchman observing the battle at an aesthetic remove, perving out at the spectacle and the Frenchman drily tallying the dead stand in pointed opposition to the women who report how often “France” burnt down their homes and destroyed the men of their community). Some of these retellings are gripping and devastating because when Djebar restrains her anger and allows history to speak for itself, the book sails.
I was considerably less interested in her autobiographical chapters, in the precocious observations of the privileged young child who escapes the veil through reading and scholarship. Similarly, the portion of the novel that shows a young Djebar being deflowered in Paris amongst great inward drama and traditional lament verges on melodrama and isn’t strong enough to stand up to the real tragedies in the book.
At one point, Djebar writes, “When writing, I have but one concern: that I should say enough, or rather that I should express myself clearly enough. Rejecting all lyricism, turning my back on high-flown language; every metaphor seems a wretched ruse, an approximation and a weakness.” Aside from the fact that those sentences contain numerous metaphors, Djebar is simply lying. How can she square that sentiment with, “To attempt an autobiography using French words alone is to lend oneself to the vivisector’s scalpel, revealing what lies beneath the skin. The flesh flakes off and with it, seemingly, the last shreds of the unwritten language of my childhood.” Or, “every language is a dark depository for piled-up corpses, refuse, sewage, but faced with the language of the former conqueror, which offers me its ornaments, its jewels, its flowers, I find they are the flowers of death—chrysanthemums on tombs!”
When Djebar works to “resurrect so many of (her) vanished sisters,” her book is unique and engaging; when she pulls back to be her own theorist and when she spotlights tiny moments of her personal development on the world historical scale of her novel, she weakens her project on the whole. show less
When Djebar gives voice to the Algerian women who aided the native resistance or when she frames the observations of victorious Frenchmen, she shares memorable and moving stories. Her offering of Algeria’s history is absorbable and relevant, knit from carefully chosen details that contrast each other quite appropriately (for instance, the Frenchman observing the battle at an aesthetic remove, perving out at the spectacle and the Frenchman drily tallying the dead stand in pointed opposition to the women who report how often “France” burnt down their homes and destroyed the men of their community). Some of these retellings are gripping and devastating because when Djebar restrains her anger and allows history to speak for itself, the book sails.
I was considerably less interested in her autobiographical chapters, in the precocious observations of the privileged young child who escapes the veil through reading and scholarship. Similarly, the portion of the novel that shows a young Djebar being deflowered in Paris amongst great inward drama and traditional lament verges on melodrama and isn’t strong enough to stand up to the real tragedies in the book.
At one point, Djebar writes, “When writing, I have but one concern: that I should say enough, or rather that I should express myself clearly enough. Rejecting all lyricism, turning my back on high-flown language; every metaphor seems a wretched ruse, an approximation and a weakness.” Aside from the fact that those sentences contain numerous metaphors, Djebar is simply lying. How can she square that sentiment with, “To attempt an autobiography using French words alone is to lend oneself to the vivisector’s scalpel, revealing what lies beneath the skin. The flesh flakes off and with it, seemingly, the last shreds of the unwritten language of my childhood.” Or, “every language is a dark depository for piled-up corpses, refuse, sewage, but faced with the language of the former conqueror, which offers me its ornaments, its jewels, its flowers, I find they are the flowers of death—chrysanthemums on tombs!”
When Djebar works to “resurrect so many of (her) vanished sisters,” her book is unique and engaging; when she pulls back to be her own theorist and when she spotlights tiny moments of her personal development on the world historical scale of her novel, she weakens her project on the whole. show less
This is a collections of novellas and shorter stories that works almost as a sociological document. Oh, it's beautiful ("artistic"), but very much exploratory in an almost scientific way.
Djebar is after the memory, history, the words and very voices of women. Algerian women (and, specifically, Muslim), silenced for centuries. There is a trace of Berber otherness, matrilinearity (interesting that Djebar, like Mernissi, has Berber heritage). But, overall, women are suffocated. They communicate show more quietly, in whispers and murmurs (woman talking is most frequently expressed as "she murmurs"), in fragments and wisps of speech.
Compare to ancient Greek shutting up of women--this is the patriarchal Mediterranean symbolically killing the woman, choking the feminine, over and over again.
This fragmented speech can be hard to take and follow. Between themselves, these women are invariably a small group of relatives, sentenced to a cloistered life in a house doing housework and raising children. So communication is rooted in a common experience and shared context. Their muted words overlap and continue each other.
There's a movie of Djebar's called The Nouba of the Women of Mount Chenoua I'd seen before reading anything of hers, that seems deeply connected to this book. It too has a folkloric-cum-historical aim, and the "nouba", a symphonic musical form, is explicitly used to describe the speech of the female characters.
(You can watch the movie, something of a rarity, on Dailymotion. I had borrowed the DVD from the library but the video quality is the same, not great. Presumably it hasn't been re-released in a better copy. Only in French, sorry, with French subtitles for Arabic. La nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua de Assia Djebbar 1/2.)
There are women who rebel. The French colonisation is almost convenient as a moment where the fight for national liberation can coincide with women's emancipation, surge into the street, grasping of political power. At least this is the hope--running out the French will result in a new society with new rules and new people behaving differently. Algerian women played an important role in the anti-colonial fight. And they suffered horribly, imprisoned, tortured, raped.
Did the new country turn out to be what they hoped or were these sacrifices taken as all female sacrifices, for granted?
In the very important Afterword Djebar ends with the caution that the "harem" may be gone but the structure of the harem still imposes its laws on women: the laws of invisibility and silence. show less
Djebar is after the memory, history, the words and very voices of women. Algerian women (and, specifically, Muslim), silenced for centuries. There is a trace of Berber otherness, matrilinearity (interesting that Djebar, like Mernissi, has Berber heritage). But, overall, women are suffocated. They communicate show more quietly, in whispers and murmurs (woman talking is most frequently expressed as "she murmurs"), in fragments and wisps of speech.
Compare to ancient Greek shutting up of women--this is the patriarchal Mediterranean symbolically killing the woman, choking the feminine, over and over again.
This fragmented speech can be hard to take and follow. Between themselves, these women are invariably a small group of relatives, sentenced to a cloistered life in a house doing housework and raising children. So communication is rooted in a common experience and shared context. Their muted words overlap and continue each other.
There's a movie of Djebar's called The Nouba of the Women of Mount Chenoua I'd seen before reading anything of hers, that seems deeply connected to this book. It too has a folkloric-cum-historical aim, and the "nouba", a symphonic musical form, is explicitly used to describe the speech of the female characters.
(You can watch the movie, something of a rarity, on Dailymotion. I had borrowed the DVD from the library but the video quality is the same, not great. Presumably it hasn't been re-released in a better copy. Only in French, sorry, with French subtitles for Arabic. La nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua de Assia Djebbar 1/2.)
There are women who rebel. The French colonisation is almost convenient as a moment where the fight for national liberation can coincide with women's emancipation, surge into the street, grasping of political power. At least this is the hope--running out the French will result in a new society with new rules and new people behaving differently. Algerian women played an important role in the anti-colonial fight. And they suffered horribly, imprisoned, tortured, raped.
Did the new country turn out to be what they hoped or were these sacrifices taken as all female sacrifices, for granted?
In the very important Afterword Djebar ends with the caution that the "harem" may be gone but the structure of the harem still imposes its laws on women: the laws of invisibility and silence. show less
Djebar's short story collection is a subversive response to Eugène Delacroix's orientalist painting of the same name and to the patriarchical silencing of women after the Algerian war. Each story stands on their own, though the overarching theme is about the sacrifice women have made to gain independence from France's oppression, and how the very nation they helped free repaid them by hiding and silencing them. The whole collection is absolutely devastating.
I enjoyed some stories more than show more others and there was one that I still haven't fully wrapped my head around. But if you're able to find this book, i urge you to get it. The two longest stories are outstanding works of art and Djebar's postface is an excellent, post-colonial analysis of the painting by Delacroix.
The eponymous story is my favorite for its well-edited, cinematic images and surrealism. I went back to re-read it after finishing the book and noticed things I hadn't picked up on the first time (e.g., it seems like four characters are re-imagined versions of the four women in Delacroix's painting). I don't usually get attached to short stories because I feel that length is needed to really expand character, but this was one that I felt deep in my soul. show less
I enjoyed some stories more than show more others and there was one that I still haven't fully wrapped my head around. But if you're able to find this book, i urge you to get it. The two longest stories are outstanding works of art and Djebar's postface is an excellent, post-colonial analysis of the painting by Delacroix.
The eponymous story is my favorite for its well-edited, cinematic images and surrealism. I went back to re-read it after finishing the book and noticed things I hadn't picked up on the first time (e.g., it seems like four characters are re-imagined versions of the four women in Delacroix's painting). I don't usually get attached to short stories because I feel that length is needed to really expand character, but this was one that I felt deep in my soul. show less
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THE WAR ROOM (1)
Women in Islam (1)
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Statistics
- Works
- 26
- Also by
- 6
- Members
- 1,554
- Popularity
- #16,576
- Rating
- 3.5
- Reviews
- 55
- ISBNs
- 141
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- 12
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