Guest of the ilb 2002
Assia Djebar is regarded as one of the most significant narrative writers of the Maghreb. Her real name is Fatima-Zohra Imalayèn. She was born in Cherchell, a small coastal town near Algiers in 1936 and attended the Koran school and the French primary school. She was the first female Algerian student to attend the renowned "École Normale Supérieure" in Paris and studied history there. At the age of twenty, she published her first novel 'La Soif'(1957), a profound psychological study about the conflicts of her generation, especially concerning women, narrated under an apparently carefree surface.
Out of consideration for her family she took the pseudonym of Assia Djebar. During the Algerian war of liberation she worked for the newspaper of the anti-colonial FLN, 'El-Moujahid' and at Rabat University, where she was involved in many cultural initiatives. After this she taught North African history and worked for Algerian newspapers and radio stations.
After Algeria became independent, authors were called nationwide to write in Arabic, upon which Djebar studied classic Arabic and enriched the French language of her later novels with Arabic sounds and rhythms. Up until the age of thirty she wrote three further novels and then turned her attention to film. For her first film, 'La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua'(1977), about a female Algerian engineer who returns to Algeria after many years in western exile, she won the 'International Critic’s Prize' of the Biennial in Venice in 1979. Her chronicle of life in the Maghreb during the first half of the 20th century, 'La Zerda ou les chants de l’oubli' won the special prize for the best historical film of the Berlinale in 1982. During the eighties, Djebar went back to writing. She gave up her position as history professor at the University of Algiers and moved to Paris. The highly regarded 'Femme d’Alger dans leur appartement' which appeared in 1980, is a narrative cycle which experiments with new style techniques, much dialogue, a sound orientated language and cutting techniques which originate from film dramaturgy.
Since then, further novels have followed in close succession: 'L’amour, la fantasia' in 1985, one of her most successful books which combines autobiography with historical reports on the French conquest of 1830 and the Algerian war of liberation. The book marks the start of a tetralogy which captures the Maghreb with its many facets historically and in the present day and always with regard to the position of women.
Djebar was awarded many literary prizes including the Franco-Arabic Friendship Prize of Literature, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Dedica Prize, the Pablo Neruda Prize and the Premio Grinzane Cavour. She received honourary doctorates from the Concordia University, Montréal and the University of Osnabrück, Germany. In 2005 she was the first woman from the Maghreb to be elected member of the Académie française. Her novels have been translated into many languages. From 1997 to 2001 she taught at Louisiana State University and since then at New York University. Djebar lives in New York and Paris.
© international literature festival berlin
Assia Djebar online: http://www.assiadjebar.net | 
