Djebar, Assia

(born Aug. 4, 1936, Cherchell, Alg.) one of the most talented and prolific of contemporary Algerian women writers.

Djebar's career as a novelist began in 1957 with the publication of her first novel, La Soif (The Mischief). It was followed by Les Impatients (1958; “The Impatient Ones”), which similarly dealt with the colonial Algerian bourgeois milieu.

The novel Les Enfants du nouveau monde (1962; “The Children of the New World”) and its sequel Les Alouettes naïves (1967; “The Naive Larks”) chronicle the growth of Algerian feminism and describe the contributions of Algerian women to the war for independence from France. Djebar collaborated with her husband, Walid Garn, on the play Rouge l'aube (“Red is the Dawn”), published in the review Promesses in 1969. The collection Poèmes pour l'Algérie heureuse (“Poems for a Happy Algeria”) also appeared that year.

Djebar spent most of the war years outside Algeria, but afterward she taught history at the University of Algiers, was made department head of the French Section at the university, and became a filmmaker. In 1978 her film Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua was released, the story of an Algerian woman engineer returned to Algeria after a long Western exile. Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement (1980; Women of Algiers in Their Apartment) is a collection of novellas. Her later works include Ombre sultane (1987; A Sister to Scheherazade).