Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade

Assia Djebar · 1936–2015 · Algeria

Originally L'Amour, la fantasia (French) · translated by Dorothy S. Blair

Why it matters

Djebar's girlhood, the French conquest, and the war of independence woven into a polyphonic history of Algerian women. Written in the colonizer's French to recover voices that colonialism and patriarchy both silenced.

At a glance

Fragmented, essayistic weave of memoir, history, and testimony defies linear reading.