Rachid Boudjedra was born in Aïn Béïda in 1941. He was schooled at the Collège Sadiki in Tunis and fought for the FLN during the War of Independence. Ever since his scandalous debut in 1969 with The Repudiation, which excoriated Algerian society for its treatment of women, Boudjedra has been considered the enfant terrible of Algerian literature. Read More He received the Prix du Roman Arabe in 2010 for Les figuiers de Barbarie (Grasset), which was translated as The Barbary Figs (Arabia Books 2013). Boudjedra's work has drawn comparisons to Faulkner and García Márquez and has been translated into several languages.