{"id":141218,"date":"2019-12-02T09:00:18","date_gmt":"2019-12-02T14:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=141218"},"modified":"2019-12-02T11:45:51","modified_gmt":"2019-12-02T16:45:51","slug":"re-covered-the-mischief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/","title":{"rendered":"Re-Covered: The Mischief"},"content":{"rendered":"

In her monthly column,<\/em>\u00a0Re-Covered, Lucy Scholes exhumes the out-of-print and forgotten books that shouldn\u2019t be. <\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s play \u201cguess the novel\u201d: It was written and first published in French in the mid-50\u2019s, and is set over the course of a single summer. Its heroine is one of the jeunesse dor\u00e9e, dissatisfied and bored despite her wealth and privilege. She drives a fast sports car, and idles away her days sunbathing on Mediterranean beaches and flirting with her boyfriend. She\u2019s a capricious enfant terrible, and she\u2019s stricken with jealousy at the happiness of a couple close to her, so she amuses herself by sabotaging their relationship, with unexpectedly tragic consequences.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, I\u2019m not talking about Fran\u00e7oise Sagan\u2019s Bonjour Tristesse<\/em>, but a lesser-known work by the Algerian writer Assia Djebar. La Soif<\/em> was first published in France in 1957 (three years after Bonjour Tristesse<\/em>) and nimbly translated into English by Frances Frenaye, as The Mischief<\/em>, the following year. There are plenty of parallels between the two novels. Both were debuts written by precociously young women writers\u2014Sagan was eighteen and Djebar twenty-one\u2014a description that also applied to their heroines: Sagan\u2019s seventeen-year-old C\u00e9cile and Djebar\u2019s twenty-year-old Nadia. However, while Bonjour Tristesse<\/em> remains famous, recognized today as a mid-twentieth-century literary sensation-turned-French-classic, The Mischief<\/em> is barely remembered, out of print in both the original French and the English translation.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t to say that Djebar (who died in 2015 at the age of seventy-eight) is unknown. On the contrary, she\u2019s remembered as one of Algeria\u2019s most celebrated female writers and intellectuals. She wrote more than fifteen novels in French (which were then translated into more than twenty languages), and was a critically acclaimed film maker and internationally respected academic. She had the voice of an intersectional feminist long before the term became popular. \u201cHer novels and poems boldly face the challenges and struggles she knew as a feminist living under patriarchy and an intellectual living under colonialism and its aftermath,\u201d her American publisher Seven Stories Press wrote in a statement made upon her death. A decade earlier, Djebar had made headlines when she became the first North African woman (and only the fifth woman) to be elected to the Acad\u00e9mie Fran\u00e7aise. In the years that followed she was regularly named as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She spent her entire life shattering glass ceilings: La Soif<\/em>, for example, was the first novel written by an Algerian woman to be published outside of Algeria. Not that this impressive detail saved the book from being considered rather lightweight by contemporary critics. The comparisons to Bonjour Tristesse <\/em>were not particularly helpful. Sagan\u2019s novel, although notorious, had garnered mixed reviews, some of which were extremely damning; a \u201cvulgar, sad little book,\u201d wrote The Spectator<\/em>. Although critics don\u2019t appear to have been as harsh about Djebar\u2019s novel, despite its \u201cnicely plotted\u201d and \u201cskillfully executed\u201d turns\u2014as the reviewer in the New York Times<\/em> described them\u2014The Mischief<\/em> was reduced to somewhat trivial juvenilia. This opinion only solidified as Djebar\u2019s voice became more overtly political throughout the course of her career. Many of her later novels remain in print\u2014from Les Enfants du Nouveau Monde <\/em>(The Children of the New World<\/em>, 1962), which documents the lives of women in a rural Algerian town who are drawn to the resistance movement through her impressive tetralogy about the history of Algiers that emphasizes the horrors of the country\u2019s colonial past, its struggle for liberation, and the subordinate position of women in Maghreb society, which began with L\u2019amour, La Fantasia <\/em>(Fantasia, An Algerian Cavalcade<\/em>,\u00a01985) and ends with Vaste est la prison <\/em>(So Vast the Prison<\/em>,\u00a01995). But with its ostensibly more frivolous storyline, The Mischief<\/em> has fallen by the wayside.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Like Bonjour Tristesse<\/em>, The Mischief<\/em> is narrated in the first person, and like Sagan\u2019s C\u00e9cile, who, when she recalls the summer she was seventeen, is beset by a \u201cstrange melancholy,\u201d Djebar\u2019s Nadia is haunted by a similar bygone episode in her life. \u201cI had thought I could banish the past from my mind,\u201d she says after she\u2019s told her story, \u201cbut all the time it lay, like a mass of dense water, within me.\u201d Nadia\u2019s life is one of easy distractions\u2014\u201cthe light rhythm of group excursions to the casinos and cinemas of Algiers, of rainy Sundays whiled away at surprise parties, of mad drives in sports cars as skittish as thoroughbred horses\u201d\u2014but these entertainments have left her cold. She\u2019s \u201cempty inside,\u201d overly familiar with \u201cthe brackish fatigue of a morning-after, after wasting the night with jazz bands and cigarettes and facile gaiety, and facing with a heavy head and weary limbs the advent of a grey, grey dawn.\u201d Only slightly older, Nadia looks back on the antics of her younger self. \u201cMy life was uneventful, superficial and empty,\u201d she confesses, \u201cof exactly the sort to justify a twenty-year-old\u2019s cynicism and disappointment. So I was wont to reflect, with no other satisfaction besides that of my own lucidity.\u201d Her candor adds to both her allure and her plausibility. Djebar\u2019s ability to capture the ennui of excess contributes to the novel\u2019s realism.<\/p>\n

Then Nadia discovers that an old school friend, Jedla, and her husband, Ali, have rented the villa next to that of Nadia\u2019s older sister Myriam (with whom Nadia herself is staying for the summer, at a popular, upmarket beach resort on the Algerian coast). Before long, Nadia begins playing games with their trust and affection. She sets out to seduce Ali as summer sport\u2014\u201cto satisfy my vanity and fill my idle time\u201d\u2014but a host of conflicting deeper currents are at work beneath the surface: \u201cAmid the dull summer heat, a mysterious interplay of emotions was subtly and shiftingly weaving itself in the quiet air.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nadia\u2019s mother died giving birth to her, thus she\u2019s only ever known the affection of her doting father. He has older daughters by another wife, but Nadia remains his spoiled youngest child. This summer, however, he\u2019s away in Europe, and Myriam is occupied by her own family\u2014her husband, her child, and the new baby that\u2019s on the way. Nadia is adrift, untethered from commitments, people, and responsibilities. She was, we learn, engaged to be married, but recently called it off. She has a sort-of boyfriend, Hussein\u2014who makes up a foursome with her, Jedla, and Ali\u2014but she toys with his affection, proving indifferent to his eager advances but desiring his attention. And then there\u2019s the nature of her feelings toward Jedla. Nothing is made explicit, but something more than friendship is definitely implied. Glimpsing her for the first time since they were at school together four years earlier, Nadia, her \u201cheart pounding,\u201d realizes that the other woman\u2019s \u201cdark eyes had lived inside me all this time, buried in some turbid emotion.\u201d So, too, all is not what it seems when it comes to the newlyweds\u2019 relationship, something Nadia only comes to realize long after she has become embroiled in their lives, after which things quickly spiral out of her control.<\/p>\n

As a haunting tale of roiling passions and power play, The Mischief<\/em> is impressive, especially as the work of a writer only just out of her teens. But the text takes on an extra dimension due to the unique position that Nadia occupies. Her father is Algerian, but her mother was French. \u201cWith your mixed blood,\u201d Hussein reminds her, \u201cyou\u2019re on the borderline between two civilizations.\u201d She has been raised in Algeria but \u201cin Western style,\u201d thus her \u201cblonde hair and easy-going ways\u201d mean she passes for European. As Hussein puts it, she\u2019s \u201con the fence\u201d: neither fully French, nor fully Algerian either. Djebar doesn\u2019t dwell on this aspect of her protagonist\u2019s identity, but the novel carries the undercurrent of racial and sexual politics, elements that haven\u2019t always been given the attention they deserve.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Take the figure of Myriam, for example, whose life can be pieced together from scattered details: she married young, as was expected of her; to all outward appearances she\u2019s a compliant and respectful wife, but her feelings toward her marriage aren\u2019t straightforward\u2014she \u201cloved and feared\u201d her husband, but also feels \u201ca sort of embittered regret for the waste of her youth.\u201d Myriam\u2019s husband is never named, nor does he appear, yet he casts a shadow over the text. It\u2019s no throwaway line, for example, when Nadia describes the way her Algerian brother-in-law \u201clooked askance at my trousered legs and the tip of my cigarette burning in the darkness.\u201d Then there\u2019s the setting of the novel, the beach resort that\u2019s \u201cfashionable\u201d enough to be \u201cfrequented by colonials.\u201d Nadia\u2019s family, Djebar takes pains to point out, are the only Muslims in residence (prior to the arrival of Jedla and Ali). Ali, it\u2019s also worth noting, is a young Algerian nationalist with firm ideas of what his country needs: \u201cPeople are always talking about colonials and colonialism, but the real trouble lies in our own lethargy, which leaves us open to exploitation. That\u2019s what\u2019s got to be shaken.\u201d This tension, between Algeria and Europe, rears its head again near the end of the novel when Nadia tries to shock Jedla with \u201csordid [\u2026] scabrous\u201d stories about her family:<\/p>\n

There was no use talking about the tender voice of my father. Myriam\u2019s submission to her husband, Leila\u2019s satisfaction over having a European servant. Jedla wanted to think that money, emancipation and a European upbringing has spoiled and corrupted the whole lot of us, especially me. And probably she was right, at that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although Nadia defies many of the restrictions ordinarily applied to women in traditional Algerian culture, in reality she isn\u2019t as uninhibited as she would like to be. Her own identity\u2014as a woman, an Algerian, and a European\u2014is complicated. On a variety of occasions she shows a vicious contempt for the Algerian women around her\u2014her sisters Myriam and Leila, and Jedla\u2014whom she thinks have been too quick to \u201csubmit to convention.\u201d Yet at the same time, she\u2019s not immune to the social conditioning that lies behind this subjugation, seeking refuge in the protection Hussein can offer her: \u201cin this reassuringly masculine presence, everything nightmarish faded away.\u201d Nadia is the focal point of a nexus of complicated assumptions, prejudices, and traditions, inadvertently representing different things to different people. This was something Djebar herself pushed back against her entire life. \u201cI am not a symbol,\u201d she consistently told people who tried to box her identity into certain categories. \u201cEach of my books,\u201d she told the French press when she was elected to the Acad\u00e9mie Fran\u00e7aise in 2005, \u201cis a step towards the understanding of the North African identity and an attempt to enter modernity.\u201d She might have been young when she wrote it, but The Mischief<\/em> was no exception.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Born Fatima-Zohra Imalay\u00e8ne, in 1936, in Cherchell, a small seaport village near Algiers, Assia Djebar was the pen name she adopted on the publication of her first novel, for fear the book might offend her father. Not, however, that he was a traditionalist. He was the only Algerian-born French teacher at the colonial school where he taught, and the unconventional driving force behind his daughter\u2019s education. As Djebar explained, he \u201cbroke with Muslim conformity, which would otherwise almost certainly have kept me in seclusion as a marriageable maiden,\u201d instead making sure his daughter stayed in school. As a consequence of which, in 1955, Djebar became the first Algerian woman to study at the \u00c9cole Normale Sup\u00e9rieure of S\u00e8vres\u2014one of France\u2019s most elite educational establishments\u2014though she was expelled only two years later for striking along with the Union of Algerian Students to protest France\u2019s colonial rule. This was when Djebar wrote The Mischief<\/em>, and although it wasn\u2019t about the specifics of the moment, it was born from that tumult and very much its own political statement on a topic that Djebar would return to again and again throughout her life: the curtailing of womens\u2019 freedom under outdated traditions passed off as the Prophet\u2019s teachings.<\/p>\n

Torn between two countries and two cultures, Djebar returned to Algeria after it won independence in 1962, but, feeling increasingly isolated\u2014\u201cthere were only men in the streets of Algiers,\u201d she told Le Monde<\/em>\u2014she returned to Paris. She spent time in America, teaching at universities in Louisiana and New York before returning again to France. Despite making it her home for much of her life, Djebar\u2019s relationship with France was one of great ambivalence. French was the language she\u2019d been educated in (despite speaking Arabic and Berber at home with her mother and grandmother, she didn\u2019t learn to write Arabic until she was an adult). It was the language of her liberation, that which had enabled her to live a political, intellectual life that would have been out of reach to the majority of her female peers, those who\u2019d been taken out of school at the age of ten. Yet it was also the language of her country\u2019s oppressors and had been foisted on her\u2014while Algeria was a French colony, teaching in Arabic was forbidden. \u201cFirst it was the language of the enemy,\u201d she explained, \u201cthen it became a kind of stepmother, in relation to the maternal tongue of Arabic.\u201d By the end of her life, she was embraced by the French\u2014speaking on Djebar\u2019s death, President Francois Hollande called her \u201ca woman of conviction, whose multiple and fertile identities fed her work, between Algeria and France, between Berber, Arab and French.\u201d The Mischief <\/em>takes us back to the moment when she was just beginning to explore these complexities, a young woman forging her own nuanced identity, as yet unsure that she would be heard.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read earlier installments of Re-Covered here.\u00a0<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Lucy Scholes is a critic who lives in London. She writes for the\u00a0<\/em>NYR Daily,<\/em>\u00a0The Financial Times,<\/em>\u00a0The New York Times Book Review,\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Literary Hub, among other publications.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Assia Djebar was one of Algeria\u2019s most celebrated female writers and intellectuals. But her debut, written when she was twenty-one, has fallen by the wayside. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1670,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46439],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-re-covered"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRe-Covered: The Mischief by Lucy Scholes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"December 2, 2019 \u2013 Assia Djebar was one of Algeria\u2019s most celebrated female writers and intellectuals. But her debut, written when she was twenty-one, has fallen by the wayside.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Re-Covered: The Mischief by Lucy Scholes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"December 2, 2019 \u2013 Assia Djebar was one of Algeria\u2019s most celebrated female writers and intellectuals. But her debut, written when she was twenty-one, has fallen by the wayside.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-12-02T14:00:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-12-02T16:45:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/img_2221.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1632\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1224\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lucy Scholes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Lucy Scholes\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"12 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Lucy Scholes\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f7d002776d4d7c0fdb6961eddb06dabc\"},\"headline\":\"Re-Covered: The Mischief\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-12-02T14:00:18+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-12-02T16:45:51+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/\"},\"wordCount\":2380,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/img_2221-1024x768.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Re-Covered\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/\",\"name\":\"Re-Covered: The Mischief by Lucy Scholes\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/img_2221-1024x768.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-12-02T14:00:18+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-12-02T16:45:51+00:00\",\"description\":\"December 2, 2019 \u2013 Assia Djebar was one of Algeria\u2019s most celebrated female writers and intellectuals. But her debut, written when she was twenty-one, has fallen by the wayside.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/img_2221.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/img_2221.jpg\",\"width\":1632,\"height\":1224},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Re-Covered: The Mischief\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f7d002776d4d7c0fdb6961eddb06dabc\",\"name\":\"Lucy Scholes\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8fcb3b549485201ecf60f90fa5811784c042b8229af2de0c3d0ae1842eac9eff?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8fcb3b549485201ecf60f90fa5811784c042b8229af2de0c3d0ae1842eac9eff?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Lucy Scholes\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/lscholes\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Re-Covered: The Mischief by Lucy Scholes","description":"December 2, 2019 \u2013 Assia Djebar was one of Algeria\u2019s most celebrated female writers and intellectuals. But her debut, written when she was twenty-one, has fallen by the wayside.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Re-Covered: The Mischief by Lucy Scholes","og_description":"December 2, 2019 \u2013 Assia Djebar was one of Algeria\u2019s most celebrated female writers and intellectuals. But her debut, written when she was twenty-one, has fallen by the wayside.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2019-12-02T14:00:18+00:00","article_modified_time":"2019-12-02T16:45:51+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1632,"height":1224,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/img_2221.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Lucy Scholes","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Lucy Scholes","Est. reading time":"12 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/"},"author":{"name":"Lucy Scholes","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f7d002776d4d7c0fdb6961eddb06dabc"},"headline":"Re-Covered: The Mischief","datePublished":"2019-12-02T14:00:18+00:00","dateModified":"2019-12-02T16:45:51+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/"},"wordCount":2380,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/img_2221-1024x768.jpg","articleSection":["Re-Covered"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/","name":"Re-Covered: The Mischief by Lucy Scholes","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/img_2221-1024x768.jpg","datePublished":"2019-12-02T14:00:18+00:00","dateModified":"2019-12-02T16:45:51+00:00","description":"December 2, 2019 \u2013 Assia Djebar was one of Algeria\u2019s most celebrated female writers and intellectuals. But her debut, written when she was twenty-one, has fallen by the wayside.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/img_2221.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/img_2221.jpg","width":1632,"height":1224},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/re-covered-the-mischief\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Re-Covered: The Mischief"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f7d002776d4d7c0fdb6961eddb06dabc","name":"Lucy Scholes","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8fcb3b549485201ecf60f90fa5811784c042b8229af2de0c3d0ae1842eac9eff?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8fcb3b549485201ecf60f90fa5811784c042b8229af2de0c3d0ae1842eac9eff?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Lucy Scholes"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/lscholes\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1670"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141218"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141229,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141218\/revisions\/141229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}