Three years after the world lost the brilliant Algerian writer Assia Djebar, Google honors her 81st birthday.
Born Fatima-Zohra Imalayen, Assia Djebar was one most influential and iconic writers from, not only Algeria and North Africa, but also the Arab world. With a life dedicated to works dealing with obstacles faced by women, she is known around the world as a prominent feminist and voice of oppressed women.
Taking an anti-patriarchal and anti-colonial stance through her works, she has inspired women’s rights and freedom movements all over the world.
Having often been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, she has won the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1996 and the Yourcenar Prize in 1997. In 2000, she won the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
She published her first novel, La Soif (The First) in 1957 under the pen-name Assia Djebar because she feared her father’s disapproval.
Later on she published popular titles like Les impatients (1958), Les Enfants du Nouveau Monde (1962), Les Alouettes naïves (1967), Ombre sultane (1987), Les Nuits de Strasbourg (1997) and Nulle part dans la maison de mon père (2008).
Djebar’s work included more than just novels. Alongside her 15 plus books, she wrote plays and made movies and plays. Her work has received international recognition and has been translated into more than 23 languages.
Unfortunately, the world Djebar in February 2015. She passed away at the age of 78.
