Marnia Lazreg was an historical sociologist who made fundamental contributions to a wide variety of fields, including the study of women, Foucault, torture, and France’s colonization of her native Algeria. She was possibly the only Algerian woman of the pre-independence generation to obtain a PhD in the United States and pursue an academic career there, publishing academic work exclusively in English for more than fifty years. She was also a novelist who wrote under the pen name Meriem Belkelthoum. She died this past January.