Fadhila El Farouk (November 20, 1967, Arris, Algeria) is a writer.[1]
Fadhila El Farouk grew up in Constantine, Algeria, speaking Berber.[2] She received her baccalaureate degree in 1987 and joined the Mathematics Department and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Batna for two years. She then returned to the University of Constantine, and joined the Institute of Literature where she found her calling since the first year. She got her own show on the National Station of Constantine, entitled "Ports of Creativity". In the written press she began as an assistant in the An-nasr newspaper, under the care of her father’s friends, such as writer Jaroua Alawa wehbeh. During her second year at the university, she became a journalist at the Hayat newspaper issued in Constantine with a group of friends from the university, and graduated in 1993.
In 1994 she finished her Certificate and rejoined the University of Constantine, but she left Algeria on the ninth of October 1995 and moved to Beirut, which had just emerged from civil war. In Beirut she began a new phase of her life: A new world of opportunities and options, of different cultures, of different religions, a world with endless possibilities.
In Beirut she met poet and playwright Paul Shaoul, who supported her as a writer. At the end of 1996 she joined the “Al Kifah Al Arabi” newspaper. Even though she only worked for one year in this newspaper, she formed a large social network, which opened the broad horizon of Beirut. In 1997 she published “A Moment of Stolen Love” and in 1997 “The Mood of a Teenager” in the Farabi publishing house in Beirut at her own expense. Then she wrote “The Feminine shame” and wanted to bring it up to a higher degree, so she went knocking on the doors of many publishing houses in Beirut, but was turned down. This novel remained unpublished for a period of two years, even though it discusses the subject of rape and its laws in Arab society, and reveals the suffering of raped women in Algeria during the black decade. But to write about any sexual subject was taboo, especially when it is about the rape that condemns men, society and the law that was designed by and for men. The novel kept wandering and getting refused until it was submitted to the publishing house of Riad Risn and read by the poet and writer Emad Al-Abdallah, who nominated it for immediate publication, and strongly supported Fadhila El Farouk, as she personally acknowledges.
Publishing her story in Dar Riad Rayes made her name known on a larger scale. The novel calls for the coexistence of religions and equality between men and women, and condemns wars of all kinds. In 2005, she published the novel The Discovery of Desire, and in 2010 Regions of Fear, all with Riyad Al Rayes in Beirut. Feminine shame was translated into French and Spanish, and some parts were translated into Italian.