Yasmina Khadra - Algérie : Président


Yasmina Khadra, whose real name is Mohammed Moulessehoul, was born on January 10, 1955 in Algeria. Two years after his country’s independence, his father sent him to the cadet military school. He was nine. After 36 years in the army, he retired in 2000, as a major, and then devoted himself to literature.

In an interview in the Monde des Livres, he reveals that behind his borrowed feminine identity, composed of his wife’s two names in honor of Algerian women, hides a man.

In «L’écrivain», published in 2001, the mystery is dispelled. In very litle time he receives international recagnition. «Morituri», which is the first of a series of crime novels with Commissioner Brahim Llob in Algiers, reveals him to the public. Through many novels, he equally illustrates “the dialogue of the deaf between the East and the West”.

Author of some twenty novels, Yasmina Khadra has been translated into 32 languages. «Ce que le jour doit à la nuit» is his most recent novel, published in 2008 (Julliard).