The Chrysalis is a novel by Algerian novelist Aïcha Lemsine. The English version was translated from the French La Chrysalide by Dorothy S. Blair who has done a splendid job, at no point did I sense this was a translation apart from the use of "old chum" that I cannot imagine any North African using in English to convey something like mon cher . It was published in 1976 in French by Editions des femmes and picked up by Quartet books who published it in English in 1993. In the English version, the book opens with an Introdution penned by the author dated 1993, at a time when the situation had seriously deteriorated in Algeria. In this intro, Lemsine has an amusing little rant: "Exposing the archaic condition of women at the time of Socialism in Algeria was not without risk... In fact, while readers and critics in Tunisia, Morocco and Europe were almost unanimous in their enthusiastic welcome of the Chrysalis, in Algeria the book was...
Blog dedicated to Algerian literature. الجزائر تكتب