The Body Besieged

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Vassallo brings together the work of Nina Bouraoui and Leïla Sebbar. Both authors are half French and half Algerian and each author's work returns unfailingly to the legacy of opposition engendered by the colonial past that France and Algeria share. The omnipresence of the Algerian War is conceptualized here as "embodied memory," a corporeal impulse to write about a war whose legacy is transmitted to these "second-generation" writers rather than a conscious decision to engage with the historical aspect of their personal heritage. Both authors suffer a culturally imposed "de-territorialization" in their life and their early autobiographical narratives