Malek Alloula

Malek Alloula (1937-2015) was an Algierian poet, writer, editor, and literary critic.

He is chiefly notable for his poetry and essays on philosophy. He wrote several books, notably a French publication entitled Le Harem Colonial, translated into English as The Colonial Harem, which was generally well received. The author analyses colonial photographic postcards of Algerian women from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, arguing that the postcards do not accurately represent Algerian women, but rather a Frenchman's fantasy of the "Oriental" female.

He was born in 1937 in Oran, Algeria. Having graduated from the École Normale Supérieure, he further studied literature at the University of Algiers and La Sorbonne, Paris, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on Denis Diderot, a French philosopher and writer.

He married Assia Djebar, an Algerian filmmaker and novelist, in 1980; divorced in 2005. He was the director of the Abdelkader Alloula Foundation, which honors his brother Abdelkader Alloula, a notable playwright and stage director who was assassinated by members of Islamic Front for Armed Jihad.

From 1999, he is the partner of the Belgian stylist Véronique Lejeune.

Having become an editor in Paris in 1967, he continued writing poetry, essays on poetics, and philosophy, working in the French language. As a critic, he spoke against the appropriation of poetry in the service of the Algerian revolution, following the independence of Algeria from France in 1962.

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