Children of the New World by Assia Djebar

The book was published in 1962 when the war took the lives of about 300 thousand people, and the struggle for independence had almost ended (Loytomaki 69). The novel was written in 1960 when the war was at its peak. Through the disclosure of real human types, the writer showed how women had assisted in the achievement of both independence and social change. Notably, while the country was gaining independence from France, the women of the state were attaining their freedom from the existing social order. The particular historical circumstances have influenced the birth of the heroines of the novel. In this reading, the emphasis is made at a recreation of the psychological portrait of a generation that has been able to reach a social breakthrough. The reader can observe the national specifics of the state and comprehend the complexities of the lives of women at that time. The text also shows a wide social, ethnographic, and historical background in order to fully recreate the traditional way of living in the country (Deb 15).

In particular, the book exhibits the role played by women during the military conflict in the face of nurses, revolutionaries, messengers, and so on.

The novel is devoted to the description of the Algerian War. The purpose of this paper is to review Djebar’s Children of the New World and discuss the various examples of the emerging female agency in the book. This book reveals the status of women in Muslim society, which has been a forbidden topic for the majority of Arab writers for decades. One of the famous novels of this writer is Children of the New World. The scope of her writing encompassed prose, dramaturgical, and journalistic works. Narrating the resistance movement from a variety of perspectivesfrom those of traditional wives to liberated students to political organizersDjebar powerfully depicts the circumstances that drive oppressed communities to violence and at the same time movingly reveals the tragic costs of war.Assia Djebar was one of the remarkable female writers of North Africa.

Her novel recounts the interlocking lives of women in a rural Algerian town who find themselves joined in solidarity and empower each other to engage in the fight for independence. However, Djebar focuses on the experiences of women drawn into the politics of resistance. Like the classic film The Battle of Algiersenjoying renewed interest in the face of world eventsDjebar’s novel sheds light on current world conflicts as it reveals a determined Arab insurgency against foreign occupation, from the inside out. Assia Djebar, one of the most distinguished woman writers to emerge from the Arab world, wrote Children of the New World following her own involvement in the Algerian resistance to colonial French rule.

Children of the New World by Assia Djebar