Djamila Debèche

Djamila Debèche (June 30, 1926 – August 10, 2010), sometimes written Debêche or Debbeche, was a French-Algerian feminist writer. She was a pioneering journalist and novelist in Algeria, where she was one of the first women writers of the French colonial period.

Biography Djamila Debèche was born in 1926 (although some sources place the year of her birth as early as 1910)

That same year, Debèche published her first novel, Leïla, jeune fille d'Algérie ("Leïla, Young Girl From Algeria"). The main character, Leïla, is of Saharan origin, but she gets the chance to attend a Catholic girls' school in Algiers and is adopted by a European family, then works as a teacher for young women in southern Algeria.

In 1955, she debuted her second novel, Aziza, which was published in Algeria. Her next work, an essay titled Les grandes étapes de l'évolution féminine en pays d'Islam ("The Great Stages of Women's Evolution in an Islamic Country"), was published in France in 1959.

Though she was a pioneer among early Algerian women writers in the French colonial period, Debèche slipped into obscurity in her later years. She died in 2010, in Paris.

Selected works

Novels

1947: Leïla, jeune fille d'Algérie. 1955: Aziza. (Received the Prix Roberge from the Académie Française in 1957)

Essays

1950: Les Musulmans algériens et la scolarisation. 1951: L'Enseignement de la langue arabe en Algérie et le droit de vote aux femmes algériennes. 1959: Les grandes étapes de l'évolution féminine en pays d'Islam.