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Assia Djebar
Algerian novelist, filmmaker, and member of the Académie française
The Algerian woman who wrote in the colonizer's language to give voice to those the colony had silenced.
The rise
Born Fatima-Zohra Imalayène, Djebar was the first Algerian woman admitted to the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. She published her first novel at twenty and went on to write over a dozen works exploring Algerian women's lives under colonialism and patriarchy. In 2005, she became the first North African woman elected to the Académie française.