Fawzia Zouari ( ar, فوزية الزواري), born 10 September 1955 in

Dahmani Dahmani, formerly Abbah Quşūr (alternative spellings Abbah Qusur or Ebba Ksour), is a town and commune in the Kef Governorate, Tunisia. As of 2004 it had a population of 14,061. It is located at 625 meters above sea level, 225 kilometers southw ...

, is a Tunisian writer and journalist.

Biography

She was born in

, about 30 kilometers south-east of

Kef Kef may refer to: Places * El Kef (also transliterated as ''Al-Kāf'' or ''Le Kef''), a city in northwestern Tunisia *Kef Governorate, Tunisia Others *''Aram Bajakian's Kef'', a 2011 album by guitarist Aram Bajakian * ISO 639:kef or Ewe languag ...

, south-west of

Tunis ''Tounsi'' french: Tunisois , population_note = , population_urban = , population_metro = 2658816 , population_density_km2 = , timezone1 = CET , utc_offset1 ...

, one of six sisters and four brothers. Her father is a sheikh, landowner and justice of the peace. She is the first of the girls not to be married during adolescent and to be able to carry out tertiary studies. She continued her studies at the faculty of Tunis aquelle? Then in Paris. A doctor in French literature from the

Sorbonne Sorbonne may refer to: * Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities. *the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970) *one of its components or linked institution, ...

, Zouari has lived in Paris since 1979. She worked for ten years at the

Institut du monde arabe The ''Institut du Monde Arabe'', French for Arab World Institute, abbreviated ''IMA'', is an organization founded in Paris in 1980 by France with 18 Arab countries to research and disseminate information about the Arab world and its cultural an ...

in various positions including editor of the magazine Qantara – before becoming a journalist for the weekly magazine Jeune Africa in 1963. The ''Caravan of the chimeras'', published in 1989 and which takes up the subject of her thesis, is devoted to the journey of Valentine de Saint-Point, grand-niece of

Alphonse de Lamartine Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine (; 21 October 179028 February 1869), was a French author, poet, and statesman who was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic and the continuation of the Tricolore as the flag of France. ...

, a muse of Futurism, who wanted to reconcile the Orient and the West, and settled in Cairo after converting to Islam Her most recent works refer to the

Maghreb The Maghreb (; ar, الْمَغْرِب, al-Maghrib, lit=the west), also known as the Arab Maghreb ( ar, المغرب العربي) and Northwest Africa, is the western part of North Africa and the Arab world. The region includes Algeria, ...

ian woman settled in Western Europe. ''This country of which I am dying'', published in 1999 and inspired by a news story, tells a fictionalized story of the lives of two Algerian worker daughters, uprooted as uncomfortably in their societies of origin as in their new country ''La Retournée'', a novel published in 2002, narrates in an ironic tone the life of a Tunisian intellectual living in France who could no longer return to his native village. It imbricates in this narrative Arabic-Berber terms, with no exact semantic equivalent in French. This book was reprinted in a pocket edition in 2006. The same year, ''The Second Wife'' appeared, featuring three Maghrebi women frequented simultaneously by the same man, and again inspired by a news item.Jamila Ben Mustapha, " Zouari, Fawzia e Kef 1949", dans Béatrice Didier, Antoinette Fouque et Mireille Calle-Gruber ous la dir. de Le dictionnaire universel des créatrices, Paris, Éditions des femmes, 2013, p. 4721.

Awards

Zouari received the

Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie The Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie (literally "Prize of the five continents of the francophonie") is a literary prize created in 2001 by the Organisation internationale de la francophonie. Winners References

{{La Francop ...

for her work ''Le Corps de ma mère'' on December 6, 2016. She had already received special mention from this organization in 2003 for her novel ''La Retournée''. She also received the Comar d'or, the top literary prize in Tunisia, in 2007 for her novel ''La Deuxième épouse''.

Works

* ''La Caravane des chimères'', Paris, Éditions de l'Olivier Orban, 1998. () * ''Ce Pays dont je meurs'', Paris, Ramsay, 1999. () * ''La Retournée'', Paris, Ramsay, 2002. () * ''Le Corps de ma mère'', Clamecy, Éditions Joëlle Losfeld, 2016. () * ''Le Voile Islamique'', Paris, Éditions Favre, 2002. () * ''Pour en finir avec Shahrazad'', Paris, Édisud, 2003. ()

References

Bibliography

Jean Dejeux, ''La Littérature féminine de langue française au Maghreb'', Paris,

Éditions Karthala Karthala is a French publishing house specializing in the history, sociology, religion, languages and geopolitics of developing countries. Its headquarters is at 22-24 boulevard Arago in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, France. Karthala wa ...

, 1994, « L'appel de l'Orient », p. 169-170. Philippe Douroux, «Fawzia Zouari, dévoilée », '' Libération'', 28 décembre 2015. () {{DEFAULTSORT:Zouari, Fawzia 1955 births Living people Tunisian journalists Tunisian women journalists Tunisian expatriates in France 20th-century journalists 21st-century journalists People from Dahmani Former Muslim critics of Islam 20th-century Tunisian women writers 20th-century Tunisian writers 21st-century Tunisian women writers 21st-century Tunisian writers