Khadra, Yasmina

Pseudonym used by the French-Algerian author Mohamed (sometimes spelled Mohammed) Moulessehoul, born at Kenadsa in the northern Algeria part of the Sahara. His mother was from a nomad family, his father an army officer. Moulessehoul was sent by his father to a cadet school, and in 1975 he started officer’s training college after which he spent 36 years in the Algerian army reaching the rank of major by the time he left in 2000. In 2001, the family went into exile in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. He has received literary renown across the world, and he has won many awards for his books about political, religious and cultural clashes in, for example, Algeria and Afghanistan from a point of view that is less common in the West. A central theme is the effect of war on individual people.