Bibliography—Books by Assia Djebar:

La Soif. Julliard, 1957. The Mischief, translated by Frances Frenaye. Simon & Schuster, 1958.

Les Impatients [‘The Impatients’]. Julliard, 1958.

Les Enfants du Nouveau Monde [‘Children of the New World’]. Julliard, 1962.

Les Alouettes naïves [‘The Naïve Larks’]. Julliard, 1962; réédition 1967.

Femmes d’Alger dans leurs appartements. Nouvelles, éd. des Femmes, 1980.

Women of Algiers in their Apartment, translated by Marjolin de Jager. University Press of Virginia, 1992.

L’Amour, la fantasia. J.-C. Lattès, 1985; réédition Albin Michel, 1995.

Fantasia, An Algerian Cavalcade, translated by Dorothy S. Blair. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1993.

Ombre sultane. J.-C. Lattès, 1987. A Sister to Scheherazade, translated by Dorothy S. Blair. London: Quartet, 1989.

Loin de Médine. Albin Michel, 1991. Far from Madina, translated from the French. London: Quartet, 1994.

Vaste es la prison [‘Vast is the Prison’]. Albin Michel, 1995.

Le blanc de l’Algerie: recit [‘The Whites/Linens/Blanks of Algeria’]. Albin Michel, 1995.
 
 

Film Scripts by Assia Djebar:

La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua, 1978. Prix de la critique internationale-Biennale de Venise, 1979.

La Zerda et les chants de l’oubli, 1982.
 
 

Secondary Bibliography on L’Amour, la fantasia:

Hedi Abdel Jaouad. "L’Amour, la fantasia: Autobiography as Fiction," Revue Celfan/ Celfan Review. 1987-1988, 7:1 2, 25-29.

Elizabeth P. Curry. Parole plurielle, parole duelle: A Study of Polyphony in the Most Recent Novels of Assia Djebar: ‘Fantasia, an Arabian Cavalcade’, ‘A Sister for Scheherazade’ & ‘Far from Madina.’ Dissertation Abstracts International, Ann Arbor, MI. 1995 May, 55:11, 3508A DAI No.: DA9505453.

Anne Donadey. "Assia Djebar’s Poetics of Subversion," L’Esprit Createur. 1993 Summer, 33:2, 107-17.

John Erickson. "Women’s Space and Enabling Dialogue in Assia Djebar’s L’Amour, la fantasia," in Postcolonial Subjects: Francophone Women Writers, edited by Mary Jean Green et al. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996, 304-20.

Patricia Geesey. "Collective Autobiography: Algerian Women and History in Assia Djebar’s L’amour, la fantasia," Dalhousie French Studies. 1996 Summer, 35, 153-67.

Soheila Ghaussy. "A Stepmother Tongue: ‘Feminine Writing’ in Assia Djebar’s Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade," World Literature Today. 1994 Summer, 68:3, 457-62.

Joanna Goodman. "L’Ecrit et le cri: Giving Voice in Assia Djebar’s L’Amour, la Fantasia," Edebiyat: The Journal of Middle Eastern Literatures. 1995, 6:1, 1-19.

Mary Jean Green. "Dismantling the Colonizing Text: Anne Hebert’s Kamouraska and Assia Djebar’s L’Amour, la fantasia," The French Review. 1993 May, 66:6, 959-66.

Danielle M. Scouras. "Muffled Screams/Stifled Voices," Yale French Studies. 1993, 82, 172-82.

Adlai H. Murdoch. "Rewriting Writing: Identity, Exile and Renewal in Assia Djebar’s L’ Amour, la fantasia," Yale French Studies. 1993, 83, 71-92.

Anne Page. "Rape or Obscene Copulation? Ambivalence and Complicity in Djebar’s L’Amour, la fantasia," Women in French Studies. 1994 Fall, 2, 42-54.

Clarisse Zimra. "Writing Women: The Novels of Assia Djebar," SubStance. 1992, 21:3 (69), 68-84.
 
 

Questions—Djebar’s Fantasia

• What is the relationship between body and language in Djebar’s Fantasia, An Algerian Cavalcade—both written and oral language? How is the body a site for linguistic transcription, and re-inscription, along a bilingual field—Arabic and French? How are identity, language and corporeality related in the novel?

• What is the importance of female ancestry—both familial, but also cultural—for Djebar? How do female ancestors help her construct a sense of identity? Female ancestry seems especially important in Djebar’s novel—for example, the way in which the female characters, indeed real Algerian women, help her construct a sense of identity. Equally important is her recovery of a submerged history through women’s testimonial voices. What is the importance of familial genealogy? What is the importance of cultural ancestry? How is her ‘genealogy’ symbolically representative of cultural dynamics in the work, specifically in relation to colonialism? How does she attempt to recover (or refuse) a genealogy severed by colonialism?

• What is the relationship between history and autobiography in Djebar’s Fantasia? Between cultural and personal identity?

• What is the significance of Djebar’s bilingualism? her ‘mother tongue’? her second language, the ‘step-mother tongue’ or colonizing language? How is the mother-tongue important? What is the relationship between the maternal tongue and the colonizer’s language—in this novel, French? How does Assia Djebar situate herself in relation to this duality in language, in culture? How is she re-writing the body in relation to the mother-tongue, according to her own desires and experiences? How does Djebar construct her subjectivity and knowledge in response to the mother-tongue? in response to the colonial language—in Djebar’s terms, the ‘step-mother’ tongue ("Le français m’est langue marâtre" (240))?