Summary
Assia Djebar: Sultania in the Shadow
Two women: Hajila and Isma.
Which of the two will become Sultania from the shadows, and which one will disperse like the Sultania of dawn into the morning shadow?
Sliding between the first and third person singular in the narrative structure of the novel "Sultanija u sjena", Isma interweaves a story about herself, her married life and about Hajila, her ex-husband's second wife whom, according to tradition, she finds for him herself.
They are completely different: Isma is an intellectual, an emancipated woman living in the West, Hajila is a girl from a poor family, married against her will - a girl who finds the only satisfaction in life in escaping to the city while her husband is at work and the children are at school.
Wandering through the city streets, she takes off her veil and exposes herself to the gaze, thus expressing a silent rebellion against the established values of the patriarchy.
Isma, like Scheherazade's sister who saves her from death in the harem, will help Hajila find her own voice and language, thus shaping the memory of her life's journey.
"Sultania in the Shadow" is a powerful story about the fate of Algerian women, about a society in which women are victims of men's laws, but also of their own calculations imposed by customs.
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Assia Djebar was born in 1936 in the Algerian town of Cherchell. Among the many awards for her works, in 2000 she won the Peace Prize of German Publishers, in 1996 the Neustadt Prize for her contribution to world literature for her insightful cancellation of the boundaries between culture, language and history in her poetic and prose works, and in 1997 she was awarded the Yourcenar Prize. She is also the author of several notable films. She writes in French, and her works have been translated into numerous world languages.
The novel "Sultania in the Shadow" is the second part of the unfinished Algerian tetralogy along with two other novels: "L'amour, la fantasia" and "The Endless Prison". She is the author of the novels "La Soif", "Les Impatients", "Les Enfants", F"emmes d'Alger dans leur appartement", "Loin de Médine", "Le blanc de l'Algérie", "La femme sans sépulture" and "La disparition de la langue française". In 2005, she was admitted to the French Academy as the first francophone writer of Arab origin.
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