Assia Djebar

Assia Djebar
Assia Djebar in 1992
Born	Fatima-Zohra Imalayen (1936-06-30)30 June 1936 Cherchell, Algeria
Died	6 February 2015(2015-02-06) (aged 78) Paris, France
Occupation	novelist, essayist, professor
Nationality	Algeria
Alma mater	École normale supérieure
Subject	Feminism
Notable works	La soif, Les impatients, Les enfants du Nouveau monde, Les alouettes naïves
Notable awards	Neustadt International Prize for Literature, Yourcenar Prize
Signature

Assia Djebar (Arabic: آسيا جبار‎‎) was the pen name of Fatima-Zohra Imalayen (30 June 1936 – 6 February 2015), an Algerian novelist, translator and filmmaker. Most of her works deal with obstacles faced by women, and she is noted for her feminist stance. She is "frequently associated with women's writing movements, her novels are clearly focused on the creation of a genealogy of Algerian women, and her political stance is virulently anti-patriarchal as much as it is anti-colonial." Djebar is considered to be one of North Africa's pre-eminent and most influential writers. She was elected to the Académie française on 16 June 2005, the first writer from the Maghreb to achieve such recognition. For the entire body of her work she was awarded the 1996 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. She was often named as a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Djebar was born Fatima-Zohra Imalayen on 30 June 1936, to Tahar Imalhayène and Bahia Sahraoui into a Berber-speaking family. She was raised in Cherchell, a small seaport village near Algiers in the Province of Aïn Defla. Djebar's father was an educator, teaching the French language at Mouzaïaville dans la Mitidja, a primary school she attended. Later, Djebar attend a Quranic private boarding school in Blida, where she was one of only two girls. She studied at Collège de Blida, a high school in Algiers, where she was the only Muslim in her class.

In 1957, she published her first novel, La Soif ("The Thirst"). Fearing her father's disapproval, she had it published under the pen name Assia Djebar. Another book, Les Impatients, followed the next year. Also in 1958, she and Ahmed Ould-Rouïs began a marriage that would eventually end in divorce.

In 1962, Djebar published Les Enfants du Nouveau Monde, and followed that in 1967 with Les Alouettes Naïves. She remarried in 1980, to the Algerian poet Malek Alloula. The couple lived in Paris, France.