Assia Djebar in the twenty-first century: Rewriting identities

Abstract

ABSTRACT Assia Djebar's novels of the twenty-first century, particularly La Femme sans sépulture and Nulle part dans la maison de mon père, are centered on a traumatic experience, but the “detours, circles, and meanders” that delay the description of this experience play another role of equal importance in Djebar's most recent writings: the reframing of an “Algerian” identity forged during the war of liberation. Drawing on her training as a historian, Djebar uncovers a regional identity that transcends the post-independence focus on Arabic as sole language and ethnicity. Including even the European residents of colonial Algeria, who now share her own exile from her homeland, Djebar extends her sense of belonging to a larger North African region—and even to the Mediterranean basin—including within it the many peoples, languages, and cultures that have crossed paths within this richly diversified area.