Novel
Leïla, jeune fille d'Algérie
Not translated into English
Djamila Debèche · 1947
Synopsis
Leïla, a young woman of Saharan origin, has grown up in Algiers, where she attended a Catholic school and received an education that has made her an emancipated woman. Brought back to her family in the South, among relatives attached to tradition, she suffers from this confinement. On her father's death, an uncle wants to impose a husband on her; a French friend and her family then offer her refuge. The novel follows her path between two worlds, and the vocation that drives her to devote herself to the education of the women of her country.
Context
Published in Algiers in 1947 by the printer Charras, the very year the author launched her review, the novel is her first book. It defends the idea that Eastern and Western civilisations must lean on each other, and makes the education of Muslim women the path to their advancement. Written in colonial Algeria, it has been reread by recent criticism in the light of Albert Memmi's The Colonizer and the Colonized, which makes it possible to detect in it the traces of colonial discourse. Debèche, the first president of the Algerian PEN Club, later fell into oblivion.
Who it is for
For the first novel of an Algerian woman who campaigned for girls' schooling, written in colonial times.
Prizes and reception
Long forgotten, it is now the subject of academic studies, in Algeria as well as abroad.