Elissa Rhaïs

Born Rosine Boumendil in Blida, Algeria, Elissa Rhaïs received her education in French at a municipal school until the age of twelve, when she took a position as a domestic worker for a Jewish family. After her first marriage to a rabbi ended in divorce, Rhaïs married a wealthy businessman and settled with him at his villa in Algiers. Hosting literary salons there, Rhaïs gained attention as a talented storyteller, and eventually she began submitting her writing to journals. In 1919 she divorced her second husband, as he would not support her ambitions, and moved to Paris, where she earned a contract with the publishing house Plon. Her first novel, Saâda, la marocaine (Saâda the Moroccan), was marketed as the work of a Muslim woman who had lived in a harem—the advertising scheme, developed by the publisher with Rhaïs’s consent, both concealed the author’s Jewish identity and tapped into the popularity of Orientalist fiction in France at the time. Associated with the literary trend known as colonial realism, the book’s message catered well to the “civilizing” mission of French colonialism of the interwar period. Over the following decade, Rhaïs published nine novels and several short-story collections. She returned to Algeria in 1922 and later spent some years in Morocco. Rhaïs died in her hometown of Blida.