Malek Alloula
# Malek Alloula

Malek Alloula (1937–2015) was an Algerian poet, writer, editor, and literary critic.

He is chiefly notable for his poetry and essays on philosophy. He wrote several books, including Le Harem Colonial in 1981, translated into English as The Colonial Harem, which was generally well received. The author analyses colonial photographic postcards of Algerian women from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, arguing that the postcards do not accurately represent Algerian women, but rather a Frenchman's fantasy of the "Oriental" female.

## Biography

He was born November 3, 1937, in Oran, Algeria. Having graduated from the École Normale Supérieure, he further studied literature at the University of Algiers and La Sorbonne, Paris, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on Denis Diderot, a French philosopher and writer.

He married Assia Djebar, an Algerian filmmaker and novelist, in 1980; they divorced in 2005. He was the director of the Abdelkader Alloula Foundation, which honors his brother Abdelkader Alloula, a playwright and stage director who was assassinated in 1994 by members of Islamic Front for Armed Jihad.

