Zoulikha, the Martyr of Cherchell, in Film and Fiction

Abstract

Readers of assia djebar's oeuvre are well aware of her commitment to restoring algerian women to their proper place in the history of their nation's anticolonial struggle. Beginning with her third novel, Les enfants du nouveau monde (1965; Children of the New World), a text offering a panoramic view of women's participation in the Algerian War, Djebar signaled her intent to chart women's political and psychological awakening during the anticolonial struggle. In contrast to this early text, Djebar's penultimate work, La femme sans sépulture (2002; “Woman without a Tomb”), focuses on one revolutionary figure: Yamina Echaïb Oudaï, known as Zoulikha, the martyr of Cherchell.