Of Dreams and Assassins
- Binding: Paperback
- Publisher: Univ of Virginia Pr
- Publish date: 04/01/2000
Kenza is an exile, first in her own society and later in France. Born during a visit to Montpellier in the year of Algerian independence, she returns with her mother to Oran to find her father has taken another wife. Her mother leaves alone, never to return. Kenza's subsequent search for herself through the mother she doesn't know, told in a frank first-person narrative, mirrors the struggle of Algerian women to make a place in a society that has stripped them of their rights in spite of their crucial participation in the war for independence. Kenza's suffocating childhood in the house of her boisterous, leering father is broken only by summers in the desert, where the dates "become golden brown and gleam like little clusters of suns that mock the children". Eventually, Kenza, like Mokeddem herself, leaves her home to go to school in Montpellier because she can no longer tolerate life inAlgeria.
Of Dreams and Assassins is a protest against the subjugation of women in Algeria and the recent violence perpetrated by fundamentalist Muslim guerrillas. In exile, Kenza puts her hope in metissage, the blending of cultures embodied by the character of Slim, her friend and confidant, who lives happily with his mixed-race origins. Kenza's story dramatizes Mokeddem's belief that the future of Algeria lies in its women and in education; only through liberation and education can the pain of Kenza's exile be redeemed.
Born in Kenadsa, Algeria, Malika Mokeddem spent her childhood in a ksar, a traditional village. She now lives in Montpellier, France, where she divides her time between practicing medicine and writing. K. Melissa Marcus, Associate Professor of French at Northern Arizona University, has translated Malika Mokeddem's The Forbidden Woman and Nina Bouraoui's Forbidden Vision into English.