Gender Dynamics, Space, and Identity Formation in Yasmina Khadra’s What the Day Owes the Night (2008, 2011)

Abstract

Yasmina Khadra’s’ ‘Ce Que le Jour Doit à la Nuit’ (What the Day Owes the Night) is an Algerian best-selling novel originally written in French. Yasmina Khadra is the non de plume of the Algerian army officer, Mohammed Moulesshoul. Moulesshoul utilised a female pseudonym to avoid the inspections of his manuscripts by the army. The version I use in this article is a translation from French by Frank Wynne (2011). Yasmina Khadra discusses the human existence in a way that seeks to determine the purpose of all life beyond one’s social condition. In other words, Yasmina Khadra perceives life as a continuum of interpersonal and intrapersonal relations that possess a strong effect on the social subjects’ existence in the world. Also, being an Algerian drives Yasmina Khadra to concentrate on issues of identity, colonialism, the production, and circulation of particular social and cultural knowledge, along with the struggle of gender and political identification. Yasmina Khadra’s narrative is a manifestation of the struggle to produce a historic national culture and a narrative discourse free of the shackles of colonialist knowledge and mode of thought. This article uses CDA and thematic analysis to critically outline and investigate the gender dynamics and identity formation that characterise Khadra’s narrative discourse.