Draft:Blanche Bendahan

Blanche Bendahan (1893–1975) was a French poet and author, whose debut novel Mazaltob, published in 1930, won an award from the Académie Française.

Personal life
Bendahan was born in 1893 in Algeria, into a family of Sephardic and Moroccan Jewish descent. Shortly after her birth, her family moved to France, where she would spend the rest of her life.

Works
Mazaltob is her first and most well-known novel. Its first English translation was not officially published until 2024, nearly 100 years after it was first published in French. This translation was published by Brandeis University Press. The translation was done by Yaëlle Azagury (a former lecturer at Barnard and Columbia Universities) and Frances Malino (a professor at Wellesley College). Malino and Azagury argue in their edition that Mazaltob "is the first of its genre--that of the feminist Sephardi novel."