The Swallows of Kabul

Mohammed Moulessehoul, publishing under the pen name “Yasmina Khadra,” is an Algerian author who writes in French. Moulessehoul used a feminine pen name to avoid military censorship, as any written publications had to be submitted to a censorship board. Though Moulessehoul initially published abroad to avoid censorship, he took on his wife’s name and signature to publish in his own country of Algeria. This process has led to some confusion regarding Yasmina Khadra’s gender, with some critics praising the feminine perspective of his works without realizing that a man wrote the text. The struggles of different genders under Taliban rule is a fundamental theme in The Swallows of Kabul, mixing the perspectives of both masculine and feminine characters in the text to give a view of life under the Taliban.

Moulessehoul has written over 30 published works and received several awards, including the Henri Gal Literature Grand Prize. Moulessehoul left the military in 2000 and settled in France with his family, serving as the director of the Algerian Cultural Center from 2007-2014 in Paris. Moulessehoul’s experiences in the military and on both sides of a colonial divide between Algeria and France inform his writing on other Middle Eastern countries, such as Afghanistan.