SOURCE: Mortimer, Mildred. Review of Ombre sultane, by Assia Djebar. French Review 61, no. 1 (October 1987): 145-46.

In the following review, Mortimer commends Djebar's presentation of contrasting women in Ombre sultane.

On an autumn day in the early 1940's, Assia Djebar's father, a schoolteacher in colonial Algeria, escorted his daughter to school for the first time, thus sending her on a bilingual, bicultural journey that freed her from the female enclosure but also sent her into exile away from the majority of her sisters. Four decades later Djebar was able to study her unique journey with sensitivity and objectivity in L'amour, la fantasia (1985). In that work she exclaims, “le dehors et le risque au lieu de la prison de mes semblables”.

Whereas L'amour, la fantasia combines Djebar's autobiography with episodes of the French conquest of 1830 and the Algerian Revolution (1954-1962), this novel [Ombre sultane] juxtaposes the lives of two women...