Children of the New World - (Women Writing the Middle East) by Assia Djebar (Paperback)

About the Book

A compelling war novel, as seen by women, sheds light on the current Iraq conflict.

Book Synopsis

A pioneering work of interconnected perspectives, Children of the New World is a novel of insurgency and resistance by one of the Arab world's most distinguished woman writers.

"Assia Djebar's point of view is feminist and anti-colonial, but her novel is no propaganda piece." ― New York Times Book Review

Centering women in political resistance, Children of the New World follows a robust cast of women in a rural Algerian town who find themselves joined in solidarity as they empower one another to engage in the fight for independence. Narrating the resistance movement across a variety of perspectives--from traditional wives to liberated students to political organizers--Djebar powerfully depicts the circumstances that drive oppressed communities to violence while she movingly reveals the tragic costs of war.

Children of the New World was written following the author's own involvement in the Algerian resistance to colonial French rule, making it both intensely personal and deeply resonant. First published in 1962, this timeless novel "embodies Djebar's refined literary sensibility, empathy for people caught in times of violent change, and penetrating insights into the complex and painful difficulties between men and women" (Booklist).

Review Quotes

"The third novel by the Algerian writer Assia Djebar was published in France in 1962, but Marjolijn de Jager's lovely translation is its first appearance in English. . . Djebar's point of view is feminist and anti-colonial, but her novel is no propaganda piece."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Djebar is an impassioned advocate of Algerian and female liberation, and this much-admired book (previously untranslated into English). . . [Children of the New World] is a painstakingly braided tapestry that richly deserves its high reputation--as is explained in informative . . . detail in scholar Clarissa Zimra's otherwise worthy afterword. . . Reading this replete, stirring novel, one can understand why."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Now translated, and beautifully so, for the first time into English, Children of the New World embodies Djebar's refined literary sensibility, empathy for people caught in times of violent change, and penetrating insights into the complex and painful difficulties between men and women."
--Booklist

"In [Djebar's] widely honored work, she explores Muslim women's struggle for social emancipation and their world in all its complexities. She is a lucid critic of gender, history, and subjectivity in colonial and postcolonial contexts. . . Through the events of the day described in Children of the New World, a new order emerges from a jumble of perceptions--a hopeful revolution that will create a nation of free souls. . . The social upheaval of the war pushes her characters, often for the first time in their lives, toward individual, instrumental and radical decisions. Djebar also explores the tensions between the singular and the collective that feminist struggle involves."
--Women's Review of Books

About the Author

Renowned writer and filmmaker Assia Djebar was born and raised in Algeria. She authored several novels, including the critically lauded So Vast the Prison and Algerian White. She has won several awards for her work, including the prestigious International Neustadt Prize for Literature.

Marjolijn de Jager, PhD, is the translator of Djebar's Algerian White and Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, which was honored by the American Literary Translators Association. She teaches at the Center for Foreign Languages and Translation at New York University.