2016-06-30



Assia Djebar was born 30 June 1936 and died 6 February 2015

Five Quotes

The word is a torch; to be held up in front of the wall of separation or withdrawal … Armed solely with the written word, our serious attention can never be distracted … And now I too seek out the rich vocabulary of love of my mother tongue …

Love, if I managed to write it down, would approach a critical point: there where lies the risk of exhuming buried cities … But my sole ambition in writing is constantly to travel to fresh pastures and replenish my water skins with an inexhaustible silence.

My father was a nobleman when he spoke his mother tongue, and a worker from the lowest class when he went over into French.

Sometimes fear grips me that these fragile moments of life will fade away. It seems that I write against erasure.

Writing in a foreign language - has brought me to the cries of the women silently rebelling in my youth, to my own true origins.

Assia Djebar was the pen name of Fatima-Zohra Imalayen, an Algerian novelist, translator and filmmaker.

 by Amanda Patterson. Follow her on  Pinterest,  Facebook,  Tumblr,  Google+,  LinkedIn, and  Twitter.

~~~

Writers Write offers the best writing courses in South Africa. Writers Write - Write to communicate.

Show more