I am Told The World Goes On

Hello Gentle Reader

I am told the world goes on. I am told life goes on. With or without me. With or without you. With or without anyone. The world keeps spinning. The road is continually traveled – though a destination is still not agreed upon. The world will unfortunately continue without two authors now. Algerian novelist and often cited as a preeminent Nobel contender Assia Djebar, has passed away February Sixth, at the age of seventy eight, in a hospital in Paris. Djebar was an adamant feminist for Muslim women, and the fight for their emancipation from male guardians, husbands and other patriarchal dominant forces. Dejebar had published more than fifteen novels in French, and they have been published into twenty-three languages. Djebar divided her time between France and the United States where she taught graduate studies, at the New York University. Assia Djebar was a woman of firsts. At the age of eighteen she was the first Muslim woman to be admitted to the prestigious French University: the Ecole Normale Superieure. In two-thousand and five Assia Djebar was appointed to the prominent Académie française, and once again was the first intellectual to take a seat from the Maghreb (the North West division of the African continent). Assia Djebar was known for her novels, her political activism for women’s rights, in her native lands; but also as an intellectual a film-maker and a student of history. French language literature has lost one of its greatest speakers, as has the region of Maghreb and Algeria.

Andre Brink was an Afrikaans writer, who actively spoke out against Apartheid, in his native South Africa. He is best known for his novel “A Dry White Season,” and its subsequent film which had Marlon Brando make an appearance out of retirment. Brink belonged to the literary group: Die Sestigers, which included the poet Ingrid Jonker and Breyten Breytenbach. Because of Brinks disapproval and open opposition of the apartheid and the subsequent government; Brinks works often banned, but was unique for using the Afrikaan’s language to make his opinions known. Before his untimely death Brink was a university professor at the University of Cape Town. He fell ill on a flight coming back from Belgium, after receiving a honorary doctorate from Université catholique de Louvain. Brink’s work protested and opposed political repression fueled by racism in his native South Africa, during apartheid. Much like Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer, he was a politically and socially aware writer, and could not tolerate let alone accept political disgraceful behavior.

Rest In Peace to both Assia Djebar and Andre Brink.

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M. Mary