Extract

Maria Carme FIGUEROLA

Universitat de Lleida

With all its pros and cons, the XX century constitutes a decisive moment for women because many of their struggles and secular demands ended successfully. In the field of literature, they also succeeded in achieving a solid position in most literary genres: despite the latent conceptual undertones in the expression “women’s literature”, female authors have harvested the fruits of their predecessors’ efforts and attained greater autonomy, allowing them to focus on a personal and intimate universe where identity plays a determinant role. Malika Mokeddem’s example synthesizes and confirms this evolution: born in the western part of the Algerian desert, the oldest of ten siblings she witnessed her family’s transition from being nomads to settling down. She studied primary and secondary school twenty kilometers away from her village. Afterwards she worked as a Teaching Assistant in various schools while studying Medicine in Oran and then concluded her studies in Paris.

After a few years as a nephrologist she decides to quit her medical practice and dedicate herself to literature fulltime. Since 1989 she combines both of these activities working from her home in Montpellier.

The synthesis of her life experience, inevitably limited by our circumstances, offers a very constrained image – aseptic almost – of the particular battle she has engaged in to ascertain not only her personal development but also her identity.

We will not take the time to review the definition of the fundamental concept...