Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade

Ethnically rich and inspiring in its descriptions, this 1985 collection of vignettes is an eye-opening look at a courageous North African country and people that have undergone an incredibly difficult history of colonization, war, and struggles against poverty, and oppression--of its women in particular. Assia Djebar is not easy to read in English translation much less in her original French. However, as I read the translation Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade (original title: L'Amour, La Fantaisia), I realized I was actually doing both the author and myself a disservice. The French language is an integral part of this narrative because it brings out an ugly irony about colonization. One of Djebar's main themes that runs all through these varied stories on Algeria's difficult history is the oxymoron of communicating her passionately patriotic feelings for her country in the language of the conquerer/colonizer--France. So, why, then, didn't Djebar write the story of this painful history from 1830 to 1962 and beyond in Arabic? I believe she wanted her stories to reach a wider audience, particularly in France where she wished to remind readers of France's brutal treatment of her people in the mid-19th century and later during the bloody war in independence, 1954-62, as well as France's attempted absorption of the Algerian culture into its own. " . . . faced with the language of the former conquerer, which offer me its ornaments, its jewels, its flowers, I find they are flowers of death--chrysanthemums on tombs! (181) . . . This language was imported in the murky, obscure past, spoils taken from the enemy with whom no fond word was ever exchanged: French . . . . This language was formerly used to entomb my people; when I write it today, I feel like the messenger of old, who bore a sealed missive which might sentence him to death or to a dungeon" (215).The collection of stories includes accounts of the original arrival of the French to Algeria's north Mediterranean shore in 1830, and provides vivid descriptions of the atrocities of the conquest--attempted genocide of Algerian tribes who hid in caves and died when French forces set fires outside the entrances to smoke them out. There are also tales of tragic outcomes of later 19th-century insurrections. (The Algerians did NOT want to be conquered by anyone!) Djebar also writes about her own childhood in the 1950s as well as tales of the painful aftermath of the independence for various widows and children.The book begins and ends with the image Djebar had of herself as a small girl being led to a French school by her father, who had been privileged to receive an education and secure a position as a teacher at that school. He wanted to give young Assia the same advantage of education, the French language, and freedom from the Muslim veil that her young cousins were already forced to wear. But with privilege came guilt and irony. "At the age when I should be veiled already, I can still move about freely, thanks to the French school. . . Unlike [my classmates:] who haven't got cousins who do not show their ankles or their arms, who do not even expose their faces. My panic is also compounded by an Arab woman's 'shame.' The French girls whirl around me; they do not suspect that my body is caught in invisible snares" (179).This collection is much more than just a self-analysis of Djebar's own identy. It's a whole saga of a country's centuries-long struggle to seize and maintin its identity and unique character despite its tragedy-laced history. As I said, not simple to read, but well worth the journey through Djebar's peculiar mode of expression.

Even if the binding and exterior appearance is in very good condition, extensive pencil writing on the margins of every single page is something a buyer needs to know about

Was an ok book, had to read it for class. Would never read again.

Among the reasons why Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade by Assia Djeber comes across as a muddle could be intentional. The Author is writing in French, the language of her nation’s (Algeria) oppressor. Also the language of the people who gave her the freedom to experience a life she wanted to live. The Narrator of the story is Ms. Djebar as she tells, history, fiction, her life’s story and that of at least one and maybe several other women. How many of them are composites or particular is also not clear, and not important? There is no sex or obscenity in this book, but this is not bed time reading for the young and it may to too convoluted for many YA readers.Initially, Fantasia covers the history of the French occupation of Algeria. The author is meticulous about her documentation and specific about using French, usually contemporary sources. The French are the people who took away the freedom of the Algerian people. But the Algerian people are not exactly a nationality. The pre-existing government, in-so far as it existed was the occupiers from the Ottoman Empire. Occupiers who had forced the Muhammadan religion on the locals, but had never ended the competing claims of competing families and tribe. The same religion gave the author the comforting traditions and experiences that she holds dear, but also threatened her at an early age with confinement and loss of freedom. Freedom to express the athleticism of her body as well as the complexities of her thoughts. In initially alternating sections she describes her life as a more westernized child in Algeria. Later she will add in narratives of women who fought in, or supported Algerian Freedom fighters in that country’s War of Independence.Even as she documents the contradictions of the French occupation she also details the willingness of the various tribes within the land called Algeria to slaughter each other and to use violence aimed particularly at women.If much of this sounds like what might be involved in converting Afghan tribal members into citizens of a modern (western) nation state, my guess is that the resemblances were not something Assia Djebar intended. The reader is free to consider the possibility.Ms. Djeber admires, especially the women who fought passively or actively to ejected the French colonials from she homeland in the post-World War II Algerian War of Independence. This was a terrible war, one that included much of the pre-modern cruelty that typified colonial wars. Across the board her heart is entirely with the freedom fighters. She has no notion that terror was practiced by other than the French. They were the occupiers and as such were served as occupiers should be. She almost admits to the fact that Muslim traditions made the freedom fighters advocates not so much for freedom, in the sense a European would have understood it, but rather as a chance to impose upon those of the various tribes the restrictions inherent in a Mohammedan state.If Fantasia is intended to completely reconcile the competing strains on a French speaking, westernized, citizen of a modern semi-tribal, Mohammedan state, what I got was mixed conclusion. Her happiest memories are from within the (forced) closed world of the traditional female household members. But also, her love for the life she was able to live when her body needed the freedom to express its athletic nature and the language that freed her ability to express her intellectual nature.This is a short, complex book. It explains much, perhaps by not completely explaining anything.

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