Yasmina Khadra

Expatriate Algerian novelist living in France

Mohammed Moulessehoul (محمد مولسهول; born 10 January 1955), better known by the pen name Yasmina Khadra (ياسمينة خضراء), is an Algerian author living in France, who writes in French. One of the most famous Algerian novelists in the world, he has written almost 40 novels, and has published in more than 50 countries. Khadra has often explored Algerian and other Arab countries' civil wars, depicting Muslim conflicts and reality, the attraction of radical Islamism to those alienated by the incompetence and hypocrisy of politicians, and conflicts between East and West. In his several writings on the Algerian war, he has exposed the regime and the fundamentalist opposition as the joint guilty parties in the country's tragedy.

Moulessehoul was born in 1955 in Kénadsa, in the Algerian Sahara. His mother, of nomadic origins, was her tribe's "chief storyteller". His father, initially a nurse, joined the Algerian National Liberation army, as Algeria began to fight for independence from France. He became an officer, wounded in 1958. Parents sent their three sons, Mohammed aged nine and later his two younger brothers, to the cadet school of Revolution in El Mechouar Palace, Tlemcen. Khadra describes the beginning of his passion for writing in his autobiography entitled The Writer, in this way he was able to keep privacy that he missed in the cadet dormitories. While at military school, at age 18, he finished his first volume of short stories, which was to appear eleven years later as Houria (1984).

At age 23, Khadra graduated from the Cherchell Military Academy (AMC), and joined the armed forces as a second lieutenant. He has published three collections of short stories and three novels under his real name between 1984 and 1989. In the early nineties, as a commander in the special forces, he was stationed at the Algerian Moroccan border and in Oran Province, during the military deployment against Islamic fundamentalists, AIS and GIA. He suffered three nervous breakdowns, escaped two ambushes and was three times forced to land in a helicopter. text = The West interprets the world as it likes. It develops certain theories that fit into its world outlook, but do not always represent the reality. Being a Muslim, I suggest a new perspective on Afghanistan, on religious fanaticism and what I would call religiopathy. My novel The Swallows of Kabul gives readers in the West a chance to understand the core of a problem that they usually only touch on the surface. Because fanaticism is a threat for all, I contribute to the understanding of its causes and backgrounds. Perhaps then it will be possible to find a way to bring it under control. Adam Piore of Newsweek wrote: "Yet it is the journey into the beaten souls of Khandra's characters that makes this book so affecting. Few writers have so powerfully conveyed what it feels like to live in a totalitarian society, where uncompromising zealotry has thoroughly penetrated the national psyche. This book is a masterpiece of misery." The Swallows of Kabul was shortlisted for the IMPAC International Dublin Literary Award in 2006. The novel was adapted to animated film under the same title in 2019. In 2004, Khadra published the crime novel Dead Man's Share (Eng. 2009), in which his character Llob becomes the plaything of the mighty in post colonial Algeria. The Attack (2005, Eng. 2006) explores the Israeli Palestinian conflict and follows the life of an Arab Israeli couple living in Tel Aviv. The protagonist is a well established medical doctor whose life is turned upside down when his wife becomes an Islamist terrorist and a suicide bomber. The novel received several literary prizes in 2006, including Prix des libraires – a prize chosen by about five thousand bookstores in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada – as the first Algerian laureate. In 2008, The Attack was shortlisted for the IMPAC award, his second work nominated. The novel's film adaptation, The Attack (2012) by Ziad Doueiri, garnered positive critics' reviews. In The Sirens of Baghdad, published in 2006 (Eng. 2007), Khadra looks at Iraq War. What the Day Owes the Night (2008, Eng. 2010) is a saga that takes place in Algeria between 1930 and 1962 and depicts a courageous defence of the double Franco Algerian culture. "Broader in its canvas then his page turning stories of Baghdad or Kabul [ ] tale of family, love and war [ ] Rich in incident and character (and ably translated by Frank Wynne), the novel shows us from within the colonised Algeria that Camus – as he acknowledged – could only glimpse as an outsider." Film adaptation under the same title (2012) did not meet commercial expectations, but was positively reviewed. In 2011, Khadra was awarded the honorary Henri Gal Grand Prize for Literature by the French Academy. Reviewing his novel Cousin K (2003, Eng. 2013), Steve Emmet of the New York Journal of Books wrote "Cousin K may be a small book but it is a giant of a literary work." In Khalil (2018, Eng. 2021), Khadra puts himself in the shoes of a Belgian terrorist of Moroccan origin, who blew himself up in Paris in November 2015. This novel was one of the best selling books in France in 2018.

On 2 November 2013, Khadra announced his candidacy for the presidency of Algeria. He was however unable to qualify, collecting only 43,000 of the 90,000 signatures required.