{"id":12781,"date":"2015-02-07T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2015-02-07T16:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=12781"},"modified":"2015-02-07T12:00:42","modified_gmt":"2015-02-07T16:00:42","slug":"assia-djebar-1936-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/assia-djebar-1936-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Assia Djebar (1936-2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"djebar\"<\/a>Very sad to learn of Assia Djebar<\/strong><\/a>‘s passing: she was an amazing woman\u00a0& a superb writer!\u00a0Her novel Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade<\/em><\/a> can stand with Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma<\/em> as foundational text for Algerian post-colonial literature. In Poems for the Millennium vol.4<\/em><\/a> I published\u00a0some of her work, including a poem\u00a0I reprinted here on Nomadics<\/em> a while back (“Poems for a Happy Algeria”<\/a>). Below, a first obit\u00a0by mlynxqualey via Arabic Literature(in English)<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Algerian novelist Assia Djebar — frequently mentioned as a Nobel Prize contender and one of the “immortals” of the\u00a0Acad\u00e9mie Fran\u00e7aise — died in a hospital in Paris:<\/i><\/p>\n

According to Algerian state radio<\/span><\/a>, Djebar — whose given name was Fatima Zohra Imalay\u00e8ne\u00a0— will be buried in her native Cherchell, where she was born in 1936.<\/span><\/p>\n

Djebar wrote novels and short-story collections striking for their wide historical sense and their female focus. They included:\u00a0The Thirst, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade, A Sister to Scheherazade, So Vast a Prison, Algerian White, Women of Algiers in Their Apartment<\/i> and The Tongue\u2019s Blood Does Not Run Dry<\/i>. She also wrote poetry.<\/span><\/p>\n

She moved to France to study at 18 and began her life as a bearer of many “firsts” when she became the first Algerian woman to be admitted to the country\u2019s top literary university, the Ecole Normale Superieure. She published\u00a0her first book in 1957, at just twenty-one.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dejbar, like many Algerian authors, was criticized for continuing to write in French\u00a0after her nation’s independence. \u00a0Although she never wrote in Arabic, she did study the language, and attempted to use French to “reproduce Arabic rhythms.”<\/span><\/p>\n

In a 2010 interview<\/span><\/a>, Djebar said that she\u00a0writes “against erasure”:<\/span><\/p>\n

In some of my earlier books (So Vast the Prison, Algerian White<\/i>, etc..) memory was often the first impulse to write, or rather the sudden urgent need to record the spontaneous testimony of someone close … Because a sudden fear seized me of seeing this shard of life, this moment of real life \u2013 with its grace, or the hollow of despair in an anonymous story, yes, sometimes fear grips me that these fragile moments of life will fade away. It seems that I write against erasure. Most often, in this flow of a past life, of desperate or brilliant experience, illuminating, a spark, shy at first, then hardened obstinacy makes me say: “this must be fixed, this should not plunge into the night, into oblivion or colorless indifference! This need to inscribe: at least it doesn\u00b4t matter if it\u2019s me who takes the pen, or some other suddenly arising to whom I could pass the lightning glimpse (pain, rebellion, or short joy) …<\/span><\/p>\n

She won a number of other prestigious prizes\u00a0for her writing and cinema including the International Critics\u2019 Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1979, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1996, sometimes called the “American Nobel,” and the Frankfurt Peace Prize in 2000.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2005, Assia Djebar became\u00a0the first woman from the Maghreb to become an “immortal” — or life-long member of the prestigious Acad\u00e9mie Fran\u00e7aise.<\/span><\/p>\n

Works available online:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

L\u2019Amour, la fantasia<\/i><\/a><\/span>\u00a0—\u00a0Excerpt\u00a0of the novel<\/span><\/a> in English translation<\/span><\/p>\n

Algerian White —\u00a0<\/i>Excerpt of the novel<\/span><\/a> in English translation<\/span><\/p>\n

“<\/i>Women of Algiers in Their Apartment<\/span><\/a>“<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Very sad to learn of Assia Djebar‘s passing: she was an amazing woman\u00a0& a superb writer!\u00a0Her novel Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade can stand with Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma as foundational text for Algerian post-colonial literature....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[849,66,76,1],"tags":[173],"class_list":["post-12781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-algeria","category-maghrebi-literature","category-obituaries","category-uncategorized","tag-assia-djebar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12781"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12788,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12781\/revisions\/12788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}