SOURCE: Bruner, Charlotte H. Review of Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, by Assia Djebar. World Literature Today 67, no. 4 (autumn 1993): 881.

In the following review, Bruner discusses the structure and thematic concerns of Women of Algiers in Their Apartment.

Assia Djebar (b. 1936) has long been recognized in the French-speaking world for four early novels, films, and translations produced during a stay in Algeria, and now for a new series of novels, Quartet, becoming available in English. In 1980, between the sets of novels, she published a small collection of short stories, Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement, now translated [as Women of Algiers in Their Apartment] and enhanced by new stories, the critical essays “Overture” and “Forbidden Gaze, Severed Sound,” an interpretive essay and interview by Clarisse Zimra, a glossary, and a list of works. Djebar divides the collection into “Today” and “Yesterday” and laments that the intervening war, which allowed...