Yasmina Khadra

Yasmina Khadra is the pen name of Mohammed Moulessehoul, an Algerian novelist and former army officer who adopted a woman's name to write freely. He is internationally acclaimed for his unflinching novels of violence, fundamentalism, and the human cost of conflict in the Muslim world.

Mohammed Moulessehoul served for decades as an officer in the Algerian army, writing in secret under his wife’s two first names — Yasmina Khadra — to avoid military censorship during Algeria’s civil war. He revealed his true identity only after going into exile in France in 2001.

Khadra is best known for a loose trilogy confronting the clash between the Islamic world and the West and the roots of fundamentalist violence: The Swallows of Kabul, set under the Taliban; The Attack, about a suicide bombing in Israel; and The Sirens of Baghdad. Spare, powerful, and humane, his novels render the human reality behind headlines of terror and war, refusing easy answers while bearing unflinching witness.

Widely translated and acclaimed, Khadra is recognized as one of the most important literary voices to emerge from the contemporary Arab world.