Assia Djebar expresses the reasons for some ill‐being that she exposes in Nulle part dans la maison de mon père, published in 2007. The novelist uses literary expressions to project cultural dimensions through her female narrator, an adult, who remembers her childhood. At the age of four or five, the protagonist got stamped for ever with her father’s rejection of her trial to learn to ride a bicycle. This article explores the dimensions of fear, shame and ill‐being that the protagonist went through from biographical, historical and psychological theoretical backgrounds. Special attention is devoted to the therapy that the narrator goes through as she tries to understand her father’s reaction; she shares her visions of the child she was and narrates her experience. The focus on the father, who seems to have changed into a different human being, is approached through paradoxical dimensions of love and dislike.

Assia Djebar expresses the reasons for some ill‐being that she exposes in Nulle part dans la maison de mon père, published in 2007. The novelist uses literary expressions to project cultural dimensions through her female narrator, an adult, who remembers her childhood. At the age of four or five, the protagonist got stamped for ever with her father’s rejection of her trial to learn to ride a bicycle. This article explores the dimensions of fear, shame and ill‐being that the protagonist went through from biographical, historical and psychological theoretical backgrounds. Special attention is devoted to the therapy that the narrator goes through as she tries to understand her father’s reaction; she shares her visions of the child she was and narrates her experience. The focus on the father, who seems to have changed into a different human being, is approached through paradoxical dimensions of love and dislike.