She is one of the Arab world’s mot renowned writers and the daughter of Algerian revolutionary figure Mohammed Cherif. Mosteghanemi was born on April 13, 1953 and became the first female Algerian writer whose works were translated into English and the first contemporary Arab author to sell hundreds of thousands of copies of her work in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Tunisia, and the UAE. translations include the first two of a trilogy titled Memory in the Flesh and Chaos of the Senses. The writings portray and feature the Algerian struggle for postcolonial success and security. Her style of prose writing has often been commended for its extensive and inspiring portrayal of the Algerian plight.
In 1998, Mosteghanemi was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz prize for her novel “Memory in the Flesh” which also revolves around Algeria’s struggle against foreign domination and the chaos that plagued the nation prior to independence. And no one was more eligible to portray this struggle as Mosteghanemi whose father’s political activities led to losing his two borthers during an anti-French demonstration and the family fleeing Algeria for Tunisia where their house was a halfway house for Algerian resistance fighters. The family returned back to its home country after independence in 1962 where Ahlam was sent to the first Arabic school in Algeria, making her one of the first of her generation to receive instruction in her native language.
The mental breakdown of Mosteghanemi’s father forced her to support the entire family at the age of 18 by working for the Algerian radio service. Her late-night radio show paved the way fro her career in poetry. She published her first poetry anthology “Ala Marfa’ Al Ayam” (On the Harbour of Time) in 1973 in Algeria and followed that up in 1976 with another successful anthology.
Mosteghanemi left to Paris in the seventies where she tied the knot to a Lebanese journalist and started a family. She earned a PhD from the Sorbonne in the eighties and published her first novel Memory in the Flesh in 1993, which is now in its 19th edition and has sold over 130,000 copies.
Mosteghanemi lives in Beirut, Lebanon.
Follow us on
