Overcoming Aphasia: Erotic Transgressions in Les nuits de Strasbourg

Assia Djebar's 1997 novel, Les nuits de Strasbourg, is set in a city at the crossroads of Europe, where the legacies of wars remain and where former enemies can become lovers. It is through the erotic transgressions constructed in this novel, born from its unlikely couples and the rich sensuality and raw sexual pleasure they experience, that Djebar succeeds in transcending the invisible barrier she calls aphasie amoureuse, thereby fully actualizing her personal discourse of sexual pleasure in and through the French language.