Yasmina Khadra

Yasmina Khadra
Yasmina Khadra in March 2010
Born	(1955-01-10) 10 January 1955 (age 62) Kénadsa, (Béchar Province), Algeria
Occupation	Novelist
Notable works	Morituri, The Swallows of Kabul, The Attack, and What the Day owes the Night
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Website
www.yasmina-khadra.com

Yasmina Khadra (Arabic: ياسمينة خضراء‎‎, literally meaning "green jasmine") is the pen name of the Algerian author Mohammed Moulessehoul (Arabic: محمد مولسهول‎‎, born January 10, 1955, in Kénadsa, Béchar Province, Algeria).

Moulessehoul, an officer in the Algerian army, adopted his wife's name as a pseudonym to avoid military censorship. Despite the publication of many successful novels in Algeria, Moulessehoul only revealed his true identity in 2001 after leaving the army and going to France. He left the army as a major in 2000. Anonymity was the only way for him to survive and avoid censorship during the Algerian Civil War. In 2004, Newsweek acclaimed him as "one of the rare writers capable of giving a meaning to the violence in Algeria today."

His novel set in Afghanistan under the Taliban, The Swallows of Kabul, was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (2006), as was The Attack (2008). L'Attentat won the Prix des libraires in 2006, a prize chosen by about five thousand bookstores in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada.

In an interview with the German radio station SWR1 in 2006, Khadra said “The West interprets the world as it likes. It develops certain theories that fit into its world outlook, but do not always represent the reality. Being a Muslim, I suggest a new perspective on Afghanistan, on religious fanaticism and what I would call religiopathy. My novel The Swallows of Kabul gives readers in the West a chance to understand the core of a problem that they usually only touch on the surface. Because fanaticism is a threat for all, I contribute to the understanding of its causes and backgrounds. Perhaps then it will be possible to find a way to bring it under control.”