Fantasia, an Algerian Cavalcade

Fantasia, an Algerian Cavalcade
Author: Assia Djebar
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Publishers
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1993
Genre: Education
ISBN:

In this stunning novel, Assia Djebar intertwines the history of her native Algeria with episodes from the life of a young girl in a story stretching from the French conquest in 1830 to the War of Liberation of the 1950s. The girl, growing up in the old Roman coastal town of Cherchel, sees her life in contrast to that of a neighboring French family, and yearns for more than law and tradition allow her to experience. Headstrong and passionate, she escapes from the cloistered life of her family to join her brother in the maquis' fight against French domination. Djebar's exceptional descriptive powers bring to life the experiences of girls and women caught up in the dual struggle for independence - both their own and Algeria's.

Women of Algiers in Their Apartment

Women of Algiers in Their Apartment
Author: Assia Djebar
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1992
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Translated for the first time into English, this collection of short fiction by one of the leading writers of North Africa details the plight of Algerian women and raises far-reaching issues that speak to us all. Women of Algiers quickly sold out its first printing of 15,000 in France and was hugely popular in Italy, but the book was denounced in Algeria for its criticism of the postcolonial socialist regime, which denied and subjugated women even as it celebrated the liberation of men. It was the first work to do so openly. These stylistically innovative, lyrical stories address the cloistering of women, the implications of reticence, and the significance of language and its connection to oppression (Djebar calls official Arabic "an authoritarian language that is simultaneously the language of men"). Mixing newly written pieces with older ones, Djebar attempts "to bring the past into a dialogue with the present". The stories raise issues surrounding this passage from colonial to postcolonial culture - national literature, cultural authenticity, and the impact of war on both men and women. The book's title comes from a Delacroix painting that depicts a unique glimpse of the harem, an emblem of the dual violation of Algerian women, both colonial and gendered.

Algeria Cuts

Algeria Cuts
Author: Ranjana Khanna
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2008
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780804752619

Algeria Cuts discusses the figure of woman, both under colonial rule in Algeria and within the postcolonial independent nation-state. It is an interdisciplinary project that spans fine art, film, colonial and legal policy, manifestos, prose fiction, and theoretical and philosophical texts concerning the relationship between France and Algeria. Khanna investigates gendered representation, identification, and justice, and in the process, calls into question the ways in which conventional disciplinary frameworks foreclose certain avenues of reflection while foregrounding others. Algeria Cuts seeks to understand Algeria and Algerian women as a philosophical site that facilitates an understanding of justice and the pursuit of feminism.

Children of the New World

Children of the New World
Author: Assia Djebar
Publisher: Feminist Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2005
Genre: Algeria
ISBN:

A compelling war novel, as seen by women, sheds light on the current Iraq conflict.

We Are Imazighen

We Are Imazighen
Author: Fazia Aïtel
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2014-11-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0813048958

To the world they are known as Berbers, but they prefer to call themselves Imazighen, or “free people.” The claim to this unique cultural identity has been felt most acutely in Algeria in the Kabylia region, where an Amazigh consciousness gradually emerged after WWII. This is a valuable model for other Amazigh movements in North Africa, where the existence of an Amazigh language and culture is denied or dismissed in countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. By tracing the cultural production of the Kabyle people—their songs, oral traditions, and literature—from the early 1930s to the end of the twentieth century, Fazia Aïtel shows how they have defined their own culture over time, both within Algeria and in its diaspora. She analyzes the role of Amazigh identity in the works of novelists such as Mouloud Feraoun, Tahar Djaout, and Assia Djebar, and she investigates the intersection of Amazigh consciousness and the Beur movement in France. She also addresses the political and social role of the Kabyles in Algeria and in France, where after independence it was easier for the Berber community to express and organize itself. Ultimately, Aïtel argues that the Amazigh literary tradition is founded on dual priorities: the desire to foster a genuine dialogue while retaining a unique culture.

The Mischief

The Mischief
Author: Assia Djebar
Publisher:
Total Pages: 134
Release: 1958
Genre: Algeria
ISBN:

Nedjma, Translated by Richard Howard

Nedjma, Translated by Richard Howard
Author: Yacine Kateb
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 1991
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780813913131

Nedjma is a masterpiece of North African writing. Its intricate plot involves four men in love with the beautiful woman whose name serves as the title of the novel. Nedjma is the central figure of this disorienting novel, but more than the unfortunate wife of a man she does not love, more than the unwilling cause of rivalry among many suitors, Nedjma is the symbol of Algeria. Kateb has crafted a novel that is the saga of the founding ancestors of Algeria through the conquest of Numidia by the Romans, the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, and French colonial conquest. Nedjma is symbolic of the rich and sometimes bloody past of Algeria, of its passions, of its tenderness; it is the epic story of a human quest for freedom and happiness.

The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry

The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry
Author: Assia Djebar
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2011-01-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1583229698

What happens when catastrophe becomes an everyday occurrence? Each of the seven stories in Assia Djebar’s The Tongue’s Blood Does Not Run Dry reaches into the void where normal and impossible realities coexist. All the stories were written in 1995 and 1996—a time when, by official accounts, some two hundred thousand Algerians were killed in Islamist assassinations and government army reprisals. Each story grew from a real conversation on the streets of Paris between the author and fellow Algerians about what was happening in their native land. Contemporary events are joined on the page by classical themes in Arab literature, whether in the form of Berber texts sung by the women of the Mzab or the tales from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. The Tongue’s Blood Does Not Run Dry beautifully explores the conflicting realities of the role of women in the Arab world. With renowned and unparalleled skill, Assia Djebar gives voice to her longing for a world she has put behind her.

Creative Reckonings

Creative Reckonings
Author: Jessica Winegar
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2006
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780804754774

Ethnographic study of cultural politics in the contemporary Egyptian art world, examining how art-making is a crucial aspect of the transformation from socialism to neoliberalism in postcolonial countries.

Journal, 1955-1962

Journal, 1955-1962
Author: Mouloud Feraoun
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2000-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780803269033

?This honest man, this good man, this man who never did wrong to anyone, who devoted his life to the public good, and who was one of the greatest writers in Algeria, has been murdered. . . . Not by accident, not by mistake, but called by his name and killed with preference.? So wrote Germaine Tillion in Le Monde shortly after Mouloud Feraoun?s assassination by a right wing French terrorist group, the Organisation Armäe Secr_te, just three days before the official cease-fire ended Algeria?s eight-year battle for independence from France. However, not even the gunmen of the OAS could prevent Feraoun?s journal from being published. Journal, 1955?1962 appeared posthumously in French in 1962 and remains the single most important account of everyday life in Algeria during decolonization. Feraoun was one of Algeria?s leading writers. He was a friend of Albert Camus, Emmanuel Robl_s, Pierre Bourdieu, and other French and North African intellectuals. A committed teacher, he had dedicated his life to preparing Algeria?s youth for a better future. As a Muslim and Kabyle writer, his reflections on the war in Algeria afford penetrating insights into the nuances of Algerian nationalism, as well as into complex aspects of intellectual, colonial, and national identity. Feraoun?s Journal captures the heartbreak of a writer profoundly aware of the social and political turmoil of the time. This classic account, now available in English, should be read by anyone interested in the history of European colonialism and the tragedies of contemporary Algeria.