Frauen beginnen die Tradition in Frage zu stellen,

Assia Djebar is also the author of several novels and a play. Her novel Fantasia,
an Algerian Cavalcade won the Franco-Arab Friendship Prize, and she has written and directed
two feature-length films: La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua, which won first prize at the Venice
Festival, and La Zerda et les chants de l'oubli. Djebar is director of the Center for French and Freancophone
Studies at Louisiana State University. Marjolijn de Jager has published numerous translations of Literary
works. Clarisse Zimra is Associate Professor of English in Modern Literary Theory and Criticism and Comparative
Literature at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

très intéressant mais par moment j'ai décroché. il faudra que je le relise. il mérite une deuxième lecture. ( )

The title of this collection refers to a painting by Eugene Delacroix, which was allegedly inspired by a brief visit inside the harem of a home in Morocco. The painting and the stories in this collection depict the emotional and intellectual state of women hidden within walls and the veil. It is also a collection comprised of haunting, evocative prose which stirs the deepest aspect of the reader's self. The yearnings, fears, coping mechanisms, faith, belief, and suffering of the women in these stories will forever be imprinted in my heart. I have rarely read such a marvelous collection ( )

Assia Djebar has written an exquisite collage of women’s stories from the Algerian civil war and its aftermath.

In “Overture”, Djebar describes her book’s goal and the hidden voices of women she is trying to capture.

These stories, a few frames of reference on a journey of listening, from 1958 to 1978.
Fragmented, remembered, reconstituted conversations…Fictious accounts, faces and murmurings of a nearby imaginary, a past-present that rebels against the intrusion of a new abstraction.
I could say: ”stories translated from…,” but from which language? From the Arabic? From colloquial Arabic or from feminine; one might just as well call it underground Arabic…
Arabic sounds—Italian, Afghan, Berber, or Bengali—and why not, but always in feminine tones, uttered from lips beneath a mask…
Words of the veiled body, language that in turn has taken the veil for so long a time.
Here, then, is a listening in…

The first and title story is about Algerian women of various backgrounds who still bear physical and psychological scars of the brutal Algerian war against French colonialization. There is the educated surgeon’s wife seeking to help her French childhood friend back from a suicide attempt while still dealing with her own adolescent years spent in prison and the silence she always carries. And the old, wrinkled woman who carries water at the public bath recalling what she has suffered and lost in the course of her life. The second section portrays the war years themselves with women exiled, imprisoned or left behind when the men went to fight. Both sections convey how war affects women in particular ways, often differently than it affects men.

Read more on my blog: me, you and books
http://mdbrady.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/women-of-algiers-in-their-apartment-by-a...