Re-Imagining Nations, Rewriting Lives: The Image of France in The Autofictions of Storm Jameson and Assia Djeb

Abstract

This article analyses the ideological use of autobiographical fiction by two twentieth-century women writers, working in radically different historical and political conditions (England in World War II, and Algeria after the War of Independence), to rewrite the imaginations of their readers into fresh configurations, and point their own national communities in fresh directions. In both projects, the image and idea of France plays a pivotal role, and the forms and processes of writing are foregrounded and laid bare, in order to summon the reader into active participation in the creation of a new idea of national identifications and allegiances.