Assia Djebar in the twenty-first century: Rewriting identities

Assia Djebar's novels of the twenty-first century, particularly La Femme sans sepulture and Nulle part dans la maison de mon pere, are centered on a traumatic experience, but the detours, circles, and meanders that delay the description of this experience play another role of equal importance in Djebar's most recent writings: the reframing of an Algerian identity forged during the war of liberation. Drawing on her training as a historian, Djebar uncovers a regional identity that transcends the post-independence focus on Arabic as sole language and ethnicity. Including even the European residents of colonial Algeria, who now share her own exile from her homeland, Djebar extends her sense of belonging to a larger North African regionand even to the Mediterranean basinincluding within it the many peoples, languages, and cultures that have crossed paths within this richly diversified area.