ABSTRACT
Assia Djebar (Fatima Zohra Imalayen) is one of North Africa’s best-known and most widely acclaimed writers. She was born in Cherchell, Algeria, and attended the primary school where her father taught French. After her studies at a French lycée and the University of Algiers, she became the first Algerian woman to be accepted at the École Normale Supérieure. A student of Louis Massignon, she eventually obtained an advanced degree in history. In 1958 she married Ahmed Ould-Rouïs, a member of the Resistance; they had a daughter and a son. They divorced, and she married poet Malek Alloula in 1980.
