ESL Blogs

Yasmina Khadra, an officer in the Algerian army, was born in 1955 in Algeria. His father was a nurse and his mother was nomadic. He adopted a woman's pseudonym to avoid military censorship. Despite the publication of many successful novels in Algeria, Mohammed Moulessehoul, his real name, only revealed his true identity in 2001 after leaving the army and going into exile and seclusion in France. Anonymity was the only way for him to survive. In 2004, Newsweek acclaimed him as "one of the rare writers capable of giving meaning to the violence in Algeria." His novel set, in Afghanistan under the Taliban,"The Swallows of Kabul" was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2006, as was The Attack 2008. L'Attentat won the Prix des libraires in 2006, a prize chosen by about five thousand bookstores in France, Switzerland, and Canada. Khadra said: “The West interprets the world as it likes. It develops certain theories that fit into its world outlook, but do not always represent the reality."