Download or read book Fantasia an Algerian Cavalcade written by Assia Djebar and published by Heinemann Educational Publishers. This book was released on 1993 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this stunning novel, Assia Djebar intertwines the history of her native Algeria with episodes from the life of a young girl in a story stretching from the French conquest in 1830 to the War of Liberation of the 1950s. The girl, growing up in the old Roman coastal town of Cherchel, sees her life in contrast to that of a neighboring French family, and yearns for more than law and tradition allow her to experience. Headstrong and passionate, she escapes from the cloistered life of her family to join her brother in the maquis' fight against French domination. Djebar's exceptional descriptive powers bring to life the experiences of girls and women caught up in the dual struggle for independence - both their own and Algeria's.
Download or read book Women of Algiers in Their Apartment written by Assia Djebar and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Translated for the first time into English, this collection of short fiction by one of the leading writers of North Africa details the plight of Algerian women and raises far-reaching issues that speak to us all. Women of Algiers quickly sold out its first printing of 15,000 in France and was hugely popular in Italy, but the book was denounced in Algeria for its criticism of the postcolonial socialist regime, which denied and subjugated women even as it celebrated the liberation of men. It was the first work to do so openly. These stylistically innovative, lyrical stories address the cloistering of women, the implications of reticence, and the significance of language and its connection to oppression (Djebar calls official Arabic "an authoritarian language that is simultaneously the language of men"). Mixing newly written pieces with older ones, Djebar attempts "to bring the past into a dialogue with the present". The stories raise issues surrounding this passage from colonial to postcolonial culture - national literature, cultural authenticity, and the impact of war on both men and women. The book's title comes from a Delacroix painting that depicts a unique glimpse of the harem, an emblem of the dual violation of Algerian women, both colonial and gendered.
Download or read book Algeria Cuts written by Ranjana Khanna and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Algeria Cuts discusses the figure of woman, both under colonial rule in Algeria and within the postcolonial independent nation-state. It is an interdisciplinary project that spans fine art, film, colonial and legal policy, manifestos, prose fiction, and theoretical and philosophical texts concerning the relationship between France and Algeria. Khanna investigates gendered representation, identification, and justice, and in the process, calls into question the ways in which conventional disciplinary frameworks foreclose certain avenues of reflection while foregrounding others. Algeria Cuts seeks to understand Algeria and Algerian women as a philosophical site that facilitates an understanding of justice and the pursuit of feminism.
Download or read book Children of the New World written by Assia Djebar and published by Feminist Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling war novel, as seen by women, sheds light on the current Iraq conflict.
Download or read book We Are Imazighen written by Fazia Aïtel and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To the world they are known as Berbers, but they prefer to call themselves Imazighen, or “free people.” The claim to this unique cultural identity has been felt most acutely in Algeria in the Kabylia region, where an Amazigh consciousness gradually emerged after WWII. This is a valuable model for other Amazigh movements in North Africa, where the existence of an Amazigh language and culture is denied or dismissed in countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. By tracing the cultural production of the Kabyle people—their songs, oral traditions, and literature—from the early 1930s to the end of the twentieth century, Fazia Aïtel shows how they have defined their own culture over time, both within Algeria and in its diaspora. She analyzes the role of Amazigh identity in the works of novelists such as Mouloud Feraoun, Tahar Djaout, and Assia Djebar, and she investigates the intersection of Amazigh consciousness and the Beur movement in France. She also addresses the political and social role of the Kabyles in Algeria and in France, where after independence it was easier for the Berber community to express and organize itself. Ultimately, Aïtel argues that the Amazigh literary tradition is founded on dual priorities: the desire to foster a genuine dialogue while retaining a unique culture.
Download or read book The Mischief written by Assia Djebar and published by . This book was released on 1958 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Tongue s Blood Does Not Run Dry written by Assia Djebar and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when catastrophe becomes an everyday occurrence? Each of the seven stories in Assia Djebar’s The Tongue’s Blood Does Not Run Dry reaches into the void where normal and impossible realities coexist. All the stories were written in 1995 and 1996—a time when, by official accounts, some two hundred thousand Algerians were killed in Islamist assassinations and government army reprisals. Each story grew from a real conversation on the streets of Paris between the author and fellow Algerians about what was happening in their native land. Contemporary events are joined on the page by classical themes in Arab literature, whether in the form of Berber texts sung by the women of the Mzab or the tales from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. The Tongue’s Blood Does Not Run Dry beautifully explores the conflicting realities of the role of women in the Arab world. With renowned and unparalleled skill, Assia Djebar gives voice to her longing for a world she has put behind her.
Download or read book Nedjma Translated by Richard Howard written by Yacine Kateb and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nedjma is a masterpiece of North African writing. Its intricate plot involves four men in love with the beautiful woman whose name serves as the title of the novel. Nedjma is the central figure of this disorienting novel, but more than the unfortunate wife of a man she does not love, more than the unwilling cause of rivalry among many suitors, Nedjma is the symbol of Algeria. Kateb has crafted a novel that is the saga of the founding ancestors of Algeria through the conquest of Numidia by the Romans, the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, and French colonial conquest. Nedjma is symbolic of the rich and sometimes bloody past of Algeria, of its passions, of its tenderness; it is the epic story of a human quest for freedom and happiness.
Download or read book Creative Reckonings written by Jessica Winegar and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnographic study of cultural politics in the contemporary Egyptian art world, examining how art-making is a crucial aspect of the transformation from socialism to neoliberalism in postcolonial countries.
Download or read book Journal 1955 1962 written by Mouloud Feraoun and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ?This honest man, this good man, this man who never did wrong to anyone, who devoted his life to the public good, and who was one of the greatest writers in Algeria, has been murdered. . . . Not by accident, not by mistake, but called by his name and killed with preference.? So wrote Germaine Tillion in Le Monde shortly after Mouloud Feraoun?s assassination by a right wing French terrorist group, the Organisation Armäe Secr_te, just three days before the official cease-fire ended Algeria?s eight-year battle for independence from France. However, not even the gunmen of the OAS could prevent Feraoun?s journal from being published. Journal, 1955?1962 appeared posthumously in French in 1962 and remains the single most important account of everyday life in Algeria during decolonization. Feraoun was one of Algeria?s leading writers. He was a friend of Albert Camus, Emmanuel Robl_s, Pierre Bourdieu, and other French and North African intellectuals. A committed teacher, he had dedicated his life to preparing Algeria?s youth for a better future. As a Muslim and Kabyle writer, his reflections on the war in Algeria afford penetrating insights into the nuances of Algerian nationalism, as well as into complex aspects of intellectual, colonial, and national identity. Feraoun?s Journal captures the heartbreak of a writer profoundly aware of the social and political turmoil of the time. This classic account, now available in English, should be read by anyone interested in the history of European colonialism and the tragedies of contemporary Algeria.
Download or read book So Vast the Prison written by Assia Djebar and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: So Vast the Prison is the double-threaded story of a modern, educated Algerian woman existing in a man's society, and, not surprisingly, living a life of contradictions. Djebar, too, tackles cross-cultural issues just by writing in French of an Arab society (the actual act of writing contrasting with the strong oral traditions of the indigenous culture), as a woman who has seen revolution in a now post-colonial country, and as an Algerian living in exile. In this new novel, Djebar brilliantly plays these contradictions against the bloody history of Carthage, a great civilization the Berbers were once compared to, and makes it both a tribute to the loss of Berber culture and a meeting-point of culture and language. As the story of one woman's experience in Algeria, it is a private tale, but one embedded in a vast history. A radically singular voice in the world of literature, Assia Djebar's work ultimately reaches beyond the particulars of Algeria to embrace, in stark yet sensuous language, the universal themes of violence, intimacy, ostracism, victimization, and exile.
Download or read book Trances Dances and Vociferations written by Nada Elia and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trances, Dances and Vociferations provides a compelling feminist analysis of gender politics in the works of four major Africana women writers: Toni Morrison, Michelle Cliff, Assia Djebar, and Paule Marshall. Nada Elia explores the way in which black women characters use conjuring, double entendre, and song to empower, liberate and determine their own female insurgency. She also explains how African and Afrodiasporic women have been forced to rewrite history and substitute a communal and individual wholeness for alienation and separation in many different settings, from Algeria to Oklahoma. Ranging over works including Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow, Djebar's A Sister to Scheherazade, Cliff's No Telephone to Heaven and Morrison's Jazz and Beloved, Elia offers essential and provocative insights into the works of some of our most influential Africana women authors today.
Download or read book The Twelve Best Books by African Women written by Chikwene Okonjo Ogunyemi and published by . This book was released on 2009-07-14 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Twelve Best Books by African Women is a collection of critical essays on eleven works of fiction and one play, an important but belated affirmation of women writers on the continent and a first step toward establishing a recognized canon of African women's literature.
Download or read book Women Fight Women Write written by Mildred Mortimer and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2018-11-29 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, the "fight to write"—the struggle to become the legitimate chronicler of one’s own story—is being waged and won by women across mediums and borders. But such battles of authorship extend well beyond a single cultural moment. In her gripping study of unsung female narratives of the Algerian War, Mildred Mortimer excavates and explores the role of women’s individual and collective memory in recording events of the violent anticolonial conflict. Presenting close readings of published works spanning five decades—from Assia Djebar’s 1962 Children of the New World to Zohra Drif’s 2014 Inside the Battle of Algiers: Memoir of a Woman Freedom Fighter— Women Fight, Women Write traces stylistic and material transformations in Algerian women’s writings as it reveals evolving attitudes toward memory, trauma, historical objectivity, and women’s political empowerment. Refuting the stale binary of men in battle, women at home, these testimonial texts let women lay claim to the Algerian War story as participants and also as chroniclers through fiction, historical studies, and memoir. Algeria’s patriarchal norms long kept women from speaking publicly about private matters, silencing their experiences of the war. Still, the conflict has ceaselessly sparked creative work. The country’s dark decade of violent struggle between the Algerian army and Islamist fundamentalists in the 1990s brought the liberation struggle back into focus, inspiring and emboldening many more women to defiantly write. Women Fight, Women Write advances the broken silence, illuminating its vital historical revisions and literary innovations.
Download or read book The Eloquence of Silence written by Marnia Lazreg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Eloquence of Silence, first published in 1994, is considered a seminal text in the scholarship of women and North Africa. Marnia Lazreg makes a critical departure from more traditional studies of Algerian women, which usually examine female roles in relation to Islam – and instead takes an interdisciplinary approach, arguing that Algerian women's roles are shaped by a variety of structural and symbolic factors. These include colonial domination, demographic change, nationalism, family formation, the turn to culturalism, and the progressive shift to a capitalist economy. Grounded in archival research supplemented by interviews, and adopting a historico-critical method, the book identifies and examines the significance of an enduring feature of women’s journey: their instrumental use as tropes in struggles between groups of men opposed to one another during political crises. It demonstrates that despite being central to contentious political issues, women’s needs and aspirations were obscured just as their voices have traditionally been silenced. This new edition is thoroughly updated throughout to connect the original material to major political disruptions in the twenty-first century, such as the 9/11 attacks on New York and events around the "Arab Spring." The book foregrounds women’s determination to forge ahead, as well as their activism, which led to progress in fighting rape and other forms of violence made banal in the wake of the civil war (1992–2002). It also calls for a "decolonization" of concepts and theoretical systems used in accounting for women’s lived reality, and a questioning of facile postfeminist discourses in their manifold expressions.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the African Novel written by F. Abiola Irele and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-23 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Africa's strong tradition of storytelling has long been an expression of an oral narrative culture. African writers such as Amos Tutuola, Naguib Mahfouz, Wole Soyinka and J. M. Coetzee have adapted these older forms to develop and enhance the genre of the novel, in a shift from the oral mode to print. Comprehensive in scope, these new essays cover the fiction in the European languages from North Africa and Africa south of the Sahara, as well as in Arabic. They highlight the themes and styles of the African novel through an examination of the works that have either attained canonical status - an entire chapter is devoted to the work of Chinua Achebe - or can be expected to do so. Including a guide to further reading and a chronology, this is the ideal starting-point for students of African and world literatures.
Download or read book A Companion to African History written by William H. Worger and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 543 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covers the history of the entire African continent, from prehistory to the present day A Companion to African History embraces the diverse regions, subject matter, and disciplines of the African continent, while also providing chronological and geographical coverage of basic historical developments. Two dozen essays by leading international scholars explore the challenges facing this relatively new field of historical enquiry and present the dynamic ways in which historians and scholars from other fields such as archaeology, anthropology, political science, and economics are forging new directions in thinking and research. Comprised of six parts, the book begins with thematic approaches to African history—exploring the environment, gender and family, medical practices, and more. Section two covers Africa’s early history and its pre-colonial past—early human adaptation, the emergence of kingdoms, royal power, and warring states. The third section looks at the era of the slave trade and European expansion. Part four examines the process of conquest—the discovery of diamonds and gold, military and social response, and more. Colonialism is discussed in the sixth section, with chapters on the economy transformed due to the development of agriculture and mining industries. The last section studies the continent from post World War II all the way up to modern times. Aims at capturing the enthusiasms of practicing historians, and encouraging similar passion in a new generation of scholars Emphasizes linkages within Africa as well as between the continent and other parts of the world All chapters include significant historiographical content and suggestions for further reading Written by a global team of writers with unique backgrounds and views Features case studies with illustrative examples In a field traditionally marked by narrow specialisms, A Companion to African History is an ideal book for advanced students, researchers, historians, and scholars looking for a broad yet unique overview of African history as a whole.
