La mujer sin sepultura

As a confluence of novelistic, historical and biographical genres, Assia Djebar, the most important Algerian writer of the twentieth century, narrates in this extraordinary work the life and death of Zulija Udai, partisan heroine of the Algerian war of independence. Zulija (1911-1957) was an exceptional woman: educated (the first Muslim graduated from the region who also spoke French); rebellious (married against parental will and divorced twice); atypical (neither prayed nor believed in superstitions); independent (she worked, did not wear a veil and dressed like a European); free (she married three times for love, and for love she chose to wear a veil and quit her job) and fighter (she gave up her children to join the resistance). After the murder of her third husband, a practicing Muslim member of the maquis, Zulija decided to continue her fight against the colonizer. Before going to the mountains, she served as a link between the city and the mountains for a clandestine network of women. After being detained by the French army, she was interrogated, tortured and finally executed, but the body was never handed over to her family. She became the "woman without a grave".