Algerian White A Narrative

In Algerian White, Assia Djebar gives a chilling firsthand account of religious extremism and intellectual persecution in her native Algeria. She recounts the lives of three of her friends a psychiatrist, a sociologist, and a playwright who were killed in the aftermath of the 1956 struggle for independence. But Djebar will not allow her friends to be silenced. Her powerful memoir grows from conversations remembered and imagined with these fallen comrades and reflects on the horrors of war and exile. This is a chilling first-hand account of the religious extremism and intellectual persecution that plagues the authors homeland. A hymn to friendship and the enduring power of language, ... also a requiem for a nations unfinished literature. The New York Times

A beloved author, translator, and filmmaker, Assia Djebar (1936–2015) was born Fatima-Zohra Imalayen in the Algerian town of Cherchell. Her novels and poems boldly faced the challenges and struggles she knew as a feminist living under patriarchy, and as an intellectual living under colonialism and its aftermath. Djebar’s writing, marked by a regal unwillingness to compromise in the face of ethical, linguistic, and narrative complexities, attracted devoted followers around the world, and received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Venice International Critics’ Prize, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Yourcenar Prize, the Frankfurt Peace Prize, and a knighthood in France’s Legion of Honor. She was the first Algerian woman to be admitted to France’s prestigious École Normale Supérieure, and the first writer from the Maghreb to be admitted to the Académie Française.