SOURCE: Vialet, Michèle E. “Between Sound and Fury: Assia Djebar's Poetics of ‘L'Entre-Deux-Langues.’” Symposium 56, no. 3 (fall 2002): 149-62.

In the following essay, Vialet examines how Djebar's “Algerian Quartet” works to redefine the boundaries of literature that is written “l'entre-deux-langues”, or, “between-two-languages.”

Mots torches qui éclairent mes compagnes, mes complices; d'elles définitivement, ils me séparent. Et sous leur poids, je m'expatrie.

Assia Djebar, L'amour, la fantasia (161)

Alors, le meurtre surgit, le sang gicle, le refus de l'entre-deux des paroles et des langues en mouvement fait plonger dans un antre obscur.

Assia Djebar, Ces voix qui m'assiègent … (33)

From 1992 to 1994, as her native Algeria rapidly collapsed into lawlessness and civil war, Assia Djebar was completing Vaste est la prison, the third volume of her “Algerian Quartet,” a projected set of four novels interweaving episodes of Algerian history from the conquest of 1830 to its independence in 1962, autobiographical materials, and...