Google doodle commemorates Assia Djebar

CAIRO –30 June 2017: Google doodle commemorates renowned Algerian novelist and filmmaker Assia Djebar Friday.

Who is Assia Djebar?

Assia Djebar is an Algerian novelist, translator and filmmaker who was born on June 30, 1936 in Algeria. Dejbar’s real name of Fatima-Zohra Imalayen, but she adopted the pen-name Assia Dejbar after the release of her first novel in 1957. Djebar paid a great attention to women affairs issues. She explored the lives of Muslim women and wrote in her fiction about the major obstacles that they usually face. Djebar was a French literature professor in New York University.

Her novels focused on Algerian women lives. Dejbar political stances were clearly anti-colonial. She wrote more than 15 novels in French, and her works translated to more than 20 languages. Dejbar was the fifth women to be elected to the Academie Francaise, to be the first writer from Maghreb to achieve such an honor.

Sher was awarded a number of awards like the International Prize of Palmi, the Peace Prize of the Frankfurt Book Fair ,the International Critics’ Prize at the Venice Biennale for the film La Nouba des Femme du Mont Chenoua and the International Literary Neustadt Prize.

“Her novels and poems boldly face the challenges and struggles she knew as a feminist living under patriarchy and 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, has attracted devoted followers around the world’’ part of the statement issued by Dejbar American publisher Seven Stories Press after her death on February 7, 2015 at the age of 78.

Ex-French President Francois Hollande issued a statement following her death, describing her as a ‘’ great intellectual and a ‘’ woman of conviction.’’