ABDELMAJID HANNOUM, Colonial Histories, Post-Colonial Memories: The Legend of the Kahina, a North African Heroine, Studies in African Literature (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2001). Pp. 235. $59.95 cloth.

Abdelmajid Hannoum's Colonial Histories, Post-Colonial Memories is a fascinating study of the many inventions of the historical-mythical figure of al-Kahina, the Berber leader who is said to have stopped, for a brief moment, the advance of Muslim armies in the Maghrib during the 1st century A.H. Hannoum's account reviews a long series of debates about the figure of the Kahina, debates that have taken place in Arabic, French, Hebrew, and now English. As Hannoum notes, the Kahina to date has appeared as man, woman, eunuch, sorceress of the Jahiliyya, queen, Christian, Jew, anti–Semite, Joan of Arc, feminist, fortress, and so on. Hannoum's list is exhaustive, although undoubtedly, as he says, there are other inventions of the figure hiding elsewhere, especially in those oral traditions now lost to us.