Assia Djebar: Out of Algeria

For more than fifty years, Assia Djebar has used the tools of poetry, fiction, drama, and film to vividly portray the complex world of Muslim women. In the process, she has become one of the most important figures in North African literature. In "Assia Djebar," Jane Hiddleston traces Djebar's development as a writer against the backdrop of North Africa's tumultuous history. Djebar's early writings were largely an attempt to delineate the experience of being a woman, an intellectual, and an Algerian, but her more recent work evinces a growing sense that the influence of French culture on Algerian letters may make such a project impossible. The first book-length study of this indispensable writer, "Assia Djebar" will interest scholars of postcolonial literature, women's studies, or francophone culture.