Taos Amrouche (Ṭāwūs ʿAmrūsh, 1913–76) was an Algerian writer and singer, who wrote in French and sang primarily in the Kabyle Berber language. Born in Tunis to Fadhma Ait Mansour (Fāṭima Āyt Manṣūr, 1882–1967) and her husband Belkacem Amrouche (Bālqāsim ʿAmrūsh, 1880–1959), she had, from an early age, an acute sense of the uniqueness of her family, whose members, as exiled Christian Kabyles, belonged amongst neither Europeans nor Tunisians, nor even Kabyles, whose religion (Islam) they did not share. The themes of difference and loneliness pervaded her novels, from Jacinthe noire (1…