Samir Kacimi was born in Algiers, Algeria, in 1974. After graduating in law and being admitted to the bar, he turned to literature. Apart from working as a columnist for the arts sections of various Algerian newspapers, having started in1993, he also initiated a literary page in the cultural newspaper
Salim Bachi was born in Algiers in 1971 and grew up in Annaba in Eastern Algeria. He studied French Language and Literature in both cities and at the Sorbonne. He has been living in Paris since 1997. Bachi made his début with short stories, published in various newspapers such as
Rachid Boudjedra was born in Aïn Béïda, in eastern Algeria in 1941. He went to school in Tunis, where he studied at the élite Lycée Saddiki and became familiar with the basics of both Arab, and western culture. In 1962 he began studying philosophy in Algiers, in which subject he
Malek Alloula was born in Oran (Algeria) in 1937. He is a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and studied literature in Algiers and at the Sorbonne. After his brother, one of the leading intellectuals of his country, was killed by islamists in 1994, Alloula created and headed the Association
Malika Ferdjoukh was born on the Mediterranean coast of Algeria in 1957 and has lived in Paris since childhood. After finishing school she studied Film and Literature, and then started working at a children’s hospital and as a teacher. She says about herself: “I love everything that tells a story.
Maïssa Bey (real name Samia Benameur) was born near Algiers in 1950. She studied Romance Studies and worked as a teacher up to the 1990s. In response to the bloody conflicts which shook her country during the so-called Black Decade (1992-2002) she broke her silence and began writing using her
Leïla Marouane was born in Algeria in 1960. She studied Medicine and Literature in Algiers and then worked as a journalist. Due to the tense situation in Algeria, she has lived and worked as a freelance writer in Paris since 1990. To date she has published four novels and one
Leila Sebbar, the daughter of Algerian-French teachers, was born in Aflou in south west Algeria in 1941. In 1961 she went to Aix-en-Provence, where she studied literature. She worked as a French teacher in Paris and wrote for various magazines, including »Sans Frontières«, »La Quinzaine littéraire«, and »Le Magazine littéraire«.
Algerian journalist and writer Kamel Daoud was born in Mostaganem in 1970. He first studied mathematics, then literature, and then began working for the French-language newspaper »Le Quotidien d’Oran« in 1994, where he served as editor-in-chief for eight years. He circumvented censorship restrictions by publishing many of his articles on
Habib Tengour is an Algerian poet, sociologist and anthropologist born in Mostaganem, Algeria in 1947. In 1959, he moved with his family to France after his father, a nationalist militant of the PPA, was forced to flee from police persecution. Tengour went on to study sociology in France and after
Boualem Sansal was born in the Algerian city of Téniet el Had in 1949. The engineer with a doctorate in industrial economics began to write relatively late in life in response to the assassination of president Mohamed Boudiaf in 1992, and the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism in Algeria. At age
Assia Djebar, the most important female poet of the Maghreb, was born in 1936 in Cherchell and was the first Algerian woman to study history at the »École Normale Supérieure« in Paris. Her first novel »La Soif« (tr: Thirst), a psychological study of the conflicts of the women of her
