Yasmina Khadra

Mohammed Moulessehoul ( born January 10, 1955), better known by the pen name Yasmina Khadra is an Algerian author who writes in French and Arabic. Moulessehoul, an officer in the Algerian army, adopted his wife's name as a pseudonym to avoid military censorship. Despite the publication of many successful novels in Algeria, Moulessehoul only revealed his true identity in 2001 after leaving the army and going to France. He left the army as a major in 2000. Anonymity was the only way for him to survive and avoid censorship during the Algerian Civil War. In 2004, Newsweek acclaimed him as "one of the rare writers capable of giving a meaning to the violence in Algeria today." His novel set in Afghanistan under the Taliban, The Swallows of Kabul, was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award (2006), as was The Attack (2008). L'Attentat won the Prix des libraires in 2006, a prize chosen by about five thousand bookstores in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada