Assia Djebar

Assia Djebar (آسيا جبار), pen name of Fatima-Zohra Imalhayène, born June 30, 1936 in Cherchell in Algeria and died February 6, 2015 in Paris, is an Algerian woman of letters, she obtained French nationality in 1967. She is considered one of the most famous and influential authors in the Maghreb. She was elected to the French Academy in 2005, becoming the first North African writer to be admitted there. Assia Djebar was born on June 30, 1936 into a traditional Algerian lower middle class family. His father is a teacher, his mother belongs to the Berkani family, an ancestor of whom fought alongside Abd El-Kader. Assia Djebar spent her childhood in Mouzaïa, studying at the French school, then in a private Koranic school. From the age of 10, she studied at Blida college and learned ancient Greek, Latin and English. She obtained the baccalaureate in 1953, entered hypokhâgne at the current Emir Abdelkader high school. In 1954, she entered khâgne at the Lycée Fénelon (Paris). The following year, she joined the École Normale Supérieure for young girls in Sèvres, in the History section. She is the first Algerian woman to join the school. In 1956, she followed the strike slogan of the General Union of Algerian Muslim Students, which protested against colonial repression in Algeria, and did not pass her exams, she would be excluded from school. She then decided to write her first novel, La Soif, under the pen name, "Assia Djebar": Assia, consolation, and Djebar, intransigence. General de Gaulle will request his reinstatement in the School in 1959 because of his “literary talent”.