Assia Djebar was born near Algiers in 1936.

She published her first novel, La Soif, at the age of 20. Her film La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua, won the International Critic’s Prize of the Biennial in Venice. Her chronicle of life in the Maghreb during the first half of the 20th century, La Zerda ou les chants de l’oubli, won the prize for best historical film of the Berlinale in 1982. Several of her novels are available in English, including Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade, and A Sister to Scheherazade. In 1996, she was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Djebar lives in New York and Paris.