Djebar, Assia

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.

Belletristik : Algerien ; Frau - Islam.

"Isma and Hajila are both wives of the same man, but they are not rivals. Isma - older, vibrant, passionate, emancipated - is in stark contrast to the passive, cloistered Hajila. In alternating chapters, Isma tells her own story in the first person, and then Hajila's in the second person. She details how she escaped from the traditional restraints imposed upon the women of her country - and how, in making her escape, she condemns Hajila to those very restraints. When Hajila catches a glimpse of an unveiled woman, she realized that she, too, wants a life beyond the veil, and it is Isma who offers her the key to her own freedom"--Amazon.co.uk.

Death begins and ends Djebar's moving, mesmerizing account of the Algerian war of independence. Using the interaction of several characters over the course of a single day in a small mountain town, Djebar shows how the fight against French colonialism pitted woman against man and brother against brother.

A collection of short stories made up of conversations between women whose title is based on Delacroix's painting of Algerian women in a harem.

"Djebar's fiction, like that of Nadine Gordimer and Edna O'Brien, wrestles with issues of oppression and the subtle ways language and history enforce it."--BOOK JACKET. "So Vast the Prison tells the story of a modern, educated Algerian woman, raised in the years of Colonial oppression and the Algerian War, whose older brother was imprisoned in France. She watches her marriage disintegrate in a society intolerant of women, even as she marvels at the closeness of women among themselves at the ritual baths and in other gatherings. Woven into the woman's personal life story is the ancient history of her land, including the loss of its early languages, the massive destruction suffered in wars of conquest, and the quirks of chance which enabled traces to remain."--BOOK JACKET.

"In Algerian White, Assia Djebar weaves an epic tapestry out of her intimate connection to a group of Algerian writers and intellectuals whose lives were cut short since the 1956 struggle for independence. They include Mahfoud Boucebi, a psychiatrist; M'Hamed Boukhobza, a sociologist; and Abdelkader Alloula, a dramatist - the beloved friends to whom she dedicates the book - as well as Albert Camus. She records the horrors of her country's civil wars and untangles the complex political and social issues that led to the long trail of blood. This utterly unique book grows from conversations remembered and imagined, meditations on her fallen literary/intellectual/spiritual peers and predecessors. Yet for Djebar, they cannot be silenced. They continue to tell stories, smile, and endure through her defiant pen. This cultural and political history of Algeria's cross-cultural reality and its fight against colonization is infused with the oral tradition of Djebar's Berber roots."--BOOK JACKET.

Algérienne, considérée aujourdʹhui comme la plus grande romancière du Maghreb, Assia Djebar nous transporte à Médine, à la mort du Prophète. Et cʹest des femmes quʹelle nous parle, nombreuses et influentes dans lʹentourage du fondateur de lʹIslam, où se déchaînent déjà des intrigues et des rivalités de succession. Nous découvrons les figures dʹune histoire ignorée, oubliée : reines de tribus, prophétesses, femmes chefs de guerre dans une Arabie en effervescence. Fatima, lʹindomptable fille du Prophète, se dresse telle une Antigone arabe, tandis quʹAïcha, sa jeune veuve, sʹinstalle dans son rôle de "diseuse de mémoire". Bien dʹautres encore, femmes de La Mecque, affranchies, errantes, mêlent leurs voix et se souviennent. Ce livre puissant, inspiré, restitue aux femmes une place volée ou occultée à la source de lʹIslam. -- Back cover.

L'ouvrage est composé d'articles, de contribution à des colloques d'études françaises et francophones de l'Université de Louisiane. Elle aborde diverses questions parmi lesquelles il faut citer: la situation des femmes en Algérie, la pratique et la fonction de la langue française dans le contexte culturel arabe, etc. L'oeuvre présente de larges aspects autobiographiques. Prix de la revue ##Etudes françaises##, 1999. La critique québécoise est partagé.