Assia Djebar
Hardcover | Pages: 227 pages Rating: 3.67 | 878 Users | 79 Reviews
Define Books In Pursuance Of Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
| Original Title: | L'amour, la fantasia |
| ISBN: | 0704326108 (ISBN13: 9780704326101) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Setting: | Algeria |
Ilustration As Books Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
In this stunning novel, Assia Djebar intertwines the history of her native Algeria with episodes from the life of a young girl in a story stretching from the French conquest in 1830 to the War of Liberation of the 1950s. The girl, growing up in the old Roman coastal town of Cherchel, sees her life in contrast to that of a neighboring French family, and yearns for more than law and tradition allow her to experience. Headstrong and passionate, she escapes from the cloistered life of her family to join her brother in the maquis' fight against French domination. Djebar's exceptional descriptive powers bring to life the experiences of girls and women caught up in the dual struggle for independence--both their own and Algeria's.Details Appertaining To Books Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
| Title | : | Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade |
| Author | : | Assia Djebar |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 227 pages |
| Published | : | July 20th 1996 by Quartet Books (UK) (first published 1985) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Cultural. Africa. Northern Africa. Algeria. Historical. Historical Fiction. France. Literature |
Rating Appertaining To Books Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
Ratings: 3.67 From 878 Users | 79 ReviewsCriticism Appertaining To Books Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
Assia Djebar wants you to write a term paper about her book. She wants you to deploy trendy crit theory terminology to unpack her overtly symbolic and extremely self-aware meta-narrative of historical readings, elided autobiography and tiresome, italicized hinge pieces. But she also wants you to learn about Algerian history, about life as an Arab woman and about the torturous process of forging an identity in the liminal space between a conquering and a conquered nation. Unfortunately, she hasFantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade is not a novel, or a memoir or an oral history, though it shares characteristics with all three genres. It's a piece of literature that defies easy categorization. It is, perhaps, best described as a meditation on history (Algeria's in this case), alienation and women based on sources from both the French and native sides of Algeria's recent, tragic history, including the author's own experiences (she fought in the last rebellion that ended in Algeria's
[This is part of my Around the World Reading Challenge, begun in 2014/2015].Closer to 3.5 stars.This is a difficult book to review. It is not a memoir or autobiography. It is not a history book. It is not fiction created from whole-cloth, either. Fantasia shares elements with all of these. The book does not really have a plot, per se. The author gives us snippets from her childhood in Algeria, and the perception of women. This is interwoven with set-pieces from Algerian history, specifically,
Ethnically rich and inspiring in its descriptions, this 1985 collection of vignettes is an eye-opening look at a courageous North African country and people that have undergone an incredibly difficult history of colonization, war, and struggles against poverty, and oppression--of its women in particular. Assia Djebar is not easy to read in English translation much less in her original French. However, as I read the translation Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade (original title: L'Amour, La
This is a really beautiful book. Assia Djebar, first and foremost, wants to speak honest words and heal past traumas. "How shall I find the strength to tear off my veil unless I have to use it to bandage the running sore nearby from which words exude?"She dissects Algerian identity, diaspora identity, how language feels for those who don't feel at home in a colonizer's language, nor their own mother tongue, resistance, the quiet suffering of MENA matriarchs who bear their burdens patiently,
Fantasia is an dense, ambitious and beautiful conceptual novel, very different and refreshing in its style and structure. It is part autobiography and part historical novel but at its heart Fantasia is a novel about Algerian women and their lost voices. The recovery of repressed stories is at the core of much postcolonial literature; Assia Djebar does it better than most, partly because she bares her teeth and her intent and sets out to openly and bravely confront exactly this silence, to
3.5/5This book is committed to a monumental undertaking, which is why I rounded up rather than down. In addition, I was nearly as bewildered by this as I was by Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, which may be a result of this Fantasia having an element of relatable bildungsroman, or that it politically wore its heart on its sleeve, or that it was highly informative when it came to one portrait of one example of nineteenth century Euro colonizing of non-Euro soil. IN short, I'm glad that my
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