Assia Djebar (Estate)

Assia Djebar (Estate)

Assia Djebar (1936-2015) was born in Cherchell, near Algiers. After her studies at the Lycée Fénelon in Paris, she became the first Algerian woman to be accepted at the École Normale Supérieure. She joined in the Algerian student strike of 1956, in the early years of the Algerian independence struggle. After Algeria gained independence, Djebar taught North African history at the Faculty of Letters and worked with the Algerian press and radio. She also worked as an assistant director on a number of film productions. Her first film, La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua (1979), won the International Critics Prize at the 1979 Film Festival in Venice. She won the Neustadt Prize for Contributions to World Literature in 1996. In 1997 she received the Yourcenar Prize and in 2000 the prestigious Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels. Djebar was a member of the Académie Royale de Langue Française de Belgique. In 2005 she was the first Algerian woman to become a member of the Académie Française.