The Question

by Henri Alleg

Hardback book with dust jacket titled THE QUESTION (France in Algeria) by Henri Alleg. (1958) - See my photographs (3) of this book on main listing page. (LL-Base2-1-top-middle)

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1958

About the author

Henri Alleg, born Harry John Salem, was a French-Algerian journalist, director of the Alger républicain newspaper, and a member of the French Communist Party. After Editions de Minuit, a French publishing house, released his memoir La Question in 1958, Alleg gained international recognition for his stance against torture, specifically within the context of the Algerian War (1954–1962).

Reviews

[Stephen Coates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Henri Alleg was first a journalist at and then publisher of the Alger Républicain, a communist-leaning daily newspaper sympathetic to the Algerian nationalist movement and which was banned in 1955 after which he went into hiding from where he continued to write until his arrest in 1957. He was tortured for a month in a clandestine prison but refused to disclose anything about those who had hidden him. “The Question” was written while he was in a military prison hospital shortly thereafter, smuggled out and sent for publication in France. After it was published and, after some 60,000 copies had been sold, the book was banned in France, the first book to be banned in that country since the 18th century, but it continued to be published clandestinely and smuggled into France from Switzerland. In due course, the book’s publication led to the collapse of France’s Fourth Republic followed by de Galle’s ascendency to the presidency and the granting of immunity from prosecution to paratroopers who had carried out the torture.

The book is a concise account of the time from his arrest until his transfer to the prison hospital. It’s striking not so much for the detail of the methods of torture but for his resolve to not disclose the names of those who had hidden him and that the torturers made no attempts to conceal their identities, perhaps comfortable knowing they’d never face justice. The book implicitly poses the question, "what would I disclose if tortured?" and, more significantly "how would I respond if I was witness to the torture of someone else, even an enemy?" While the book is a gem, its lustre is enhanced by the forward by Ellen Ray, introduction by James D Le Sueur and forward by Jean-Paul Sartre which set the context of the book.