Historical Figures

Assia Djebar, historian and woman of letters

Fatima Zohra Imalayène, known as Assia Djebar (1936 – 2015), is an Algerian woman of letters, historian and director. In 2005, she was elected to the French Academy.

Thirst :a first novel at 20

Daughter of Bahia Sahraoui and Tahar Imalhayène, teacher, Fatima Zohra Imalayène was born on June 30, 1936 in Cherchell, Algeria. She grew up in Mouzaia, in the north of the country, and studied in a French school and then a Koranic school. At Blida College, she learned English, Latin and Ancient Greek.

After obtaining her baccalaureate, Fatima entered hypokhâgne in Algiers and then khâgne in Paris. In 1955, she began to study history at the Ecole Normale Supérieure for young girls in Sèvres; she is the first Muslim and the first Algerian to enter the school. The following year, following her decision to take part in a strike, she was expelled from school. So, at twenty, she wrote, in French, her first novel, La Soif , and chose the pseudonym Assia Djebar (Assia:consolation; Djebar:intransigence) so as not to shock her family.

Often autobiographical books

Assia Djebar marries Ahmed Ould-Rouis, writer, and leaves France to return to live in the Maghreb. She taught modern and contemporary history for a few years in Rabat before obtaining a post at the University of Algiers in 1962. She was then forced to teach in literary Arabic, which she refused. In the following years, she returned to live mainly in France and remarried with Malek Alloula, an Algerian writer.

At the same time, Assia continues to write and publish novels, a collection of poetry and a play:Les Enfants du Nouveau Monde (1962), The Naive Larks (1967), Poems for happy Algeria (1969), Red at Dawn (1969). Often autobiographical, her books, always written in French, take place partly during the Algerian war and focus on the role and status of women during this period.

Elected to the French Academy

From the 1970s, Assia Djebar devoted herself to cinema for a few years and directed La Nouba des Femmes du Mont Chenoua, film shot in the Algerian mountains in 1976 with which she won the International Critics Prize at the Venice Biennale. In 1982, she directed the short film La Zerda ou les chants de l'oublie . She then plunged back into writing, again publishing novels and short stories inspired by her own history and that of her country.

In 1999, Assia was elected a member of the Royal Academy of French Language and Literature of Belgium. On June 16, 2005, she was elected to the French Academy. This election makes her the fifth of eight women elected to the French Academy since its foundation, out of 700 members.

Assia Djebar died on February 6, 2015 in Paris. She is considered one of the major authors of the Maghreb.