Culture, Society & Diaspora
Culture, Society & Diaspora
She wrote in French, the language of colonial power, to recover what colonial rule tried to erase. For six decades, Assia Djebar wove together women’s whispered testimonies, buried archives, and her own memories to build a body of work that…
A second-century writer born at Madauros — modern M’Daourouch in Souk Ahras Province — not only called himself “half Numidian, half Gaetulian” in his own defence speech, but smuggled his hometown into the closing pages of his novel when a…
On a hilltop plateau about 70 kilometres west of Algiers, there is a circular stone tomb the size of a small stadium. It has been standing for roughly two thousand years. Scholars have argued about who built it, and who…
The Jardin d’Essai du Hamma — also known as El Hamma Botanical Garden or simply Jardin d’Essai — is one of Algiers’ most distinctive public spaces. Spread across roughly 32 hectares in the capital’s El Hamma district, it combines a…
Few public spaces in Algeria carry as much social weight as the coffee house. From the traditional café maure (a traditional North African-style café/tea room, often serving coffee, mint tea, and syrups) of the Ottoman era to the espresso bars…
If you have Algerian friends or colleagues, you may know at least one Bouali, Bouazza, or Boumaza. The prefix Bou- is one of the most recognisable features of Algerian surnames — and once you understand what it means and how…