See also in F: Family Life: Children and Adolescents: Bildungsroman: Female Arabic Bildungsroman
- Khanāthah Bannūnah (1940-, Morocco) – al-Nār wa al-Ikhtiyār (‘Fire and choice’, 1969) and the short story collection li-Yasquṭ al-Ṣamt (‘Down with silence’, 1967) deal with topics linking the political with women. She has often written about the injustices against Palestinians.
- Rabīʿah Jalṭī (1964-, Algeria) – Qawārīr Shāriʿa Jamīlah Būḥīrid (‘Bottles of Jamila Buhired Street’, 2018). The female characters in this novel live in the Algerian sea-town of ʿAshqānah, where a group of tireless women embark on a project to change the names of the streets to those of influential Algerian women, such as Fāṭmah Nsūmir, and important figure in the Algerian resistance movement during the French colonization. The novel describes their endless efforts to achieve this goal, as well as the historical personalities they want to name the streets after.
- Saḥar Khalīfah (1941-, Palestine) – ʿAbbād al-Shams (‘The sunflower’, 1980). This novel integrates the themes of nationalism and feminist liberation (reference). Set in Nablus, it centres the widow Saʿidiyyah, who, to take care of her several children, comes up with innovative work such as sowing clothes. Her story is reflected on by Rafīf, a local journalist. The novel emphasizes the need of Palestinians to stay in Palestine, rather than migrate to for example Jordan or Iraq, and to resist occupation. The novel can be read as a sequel to Khalīfah’s al-Ṣabbar (1976, English trans. Wild Thorns, 1984).
- Yamina Méchakra (1949 – 2013, Algeria) – La grotte éclatée (‘The exploded cave’, 1979). Set in a cave which functions as a shelter and a hospital for the revolutionaries, the events of Algeria’s liberation war are narrated by an anonymous female fighter for the National Liberation Front (FLN). Like all combatants, the narrator strives for an independence that will allow her, as much as her fellow men, to enjoy freedom (reference). The novel links the glorification of the liberation war to exploring issues of motherhood when the narrator becomes a single mother, including a criticism of the post-independence nationalist affiliation that negatively effected the position of women (reference) (also in F: Children and Family Life: Parent and Child: Mother and Child and also 1954 – 1962 French Algerian War and Algerian Independence).
- Laṭīfa al-Zayyāt (1923 – 1996, Egypt) – al-Bāb al-Maftūḥ (1960, English trans. The Open Door, 2002). This novel interweaves the story of a middle-class girl’s coming to political and sexual consciousness, with that of the struggle for national identity and independence in Egypt (reference) (see for more information in: C: Children and Family Life: Children and Adolescents: Bildungsroman: Female Arabic Bildungsroman).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- EAL, p. 432
- Guerroui Mervette. 2017. “La representation de l’histoire algerienne au feminin dans l’oeuvre de Yamina Mechakra ‘La grotte éclattée’.” Langues & Usages 1: 161- 173, p. 167, 169
- EAL, p. 825