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Le Blanc de l'Algérie
Convoquer les morts, ces " chers disparus ", et restituer leurs derniers instants, l'horreur de leur mort, la douleur de leurs proches, comme un cérémonial dans un pays en proie à la guerre, où l'écrivain est offert en victime propitiatoire, tel est le propos de ce récit qui répond autant à une exigence de mémoire immédiate qu'à un désir de lire autrement l'histoire de l'Algérie. Qu'il s'agisse d'écrivains célèbres - Albert Camus, Jean Amrouche, Frantz Fanon, Jean Sénac, Mouloud Mammeri, Kateb Yacine, Tahar Djaout - ou moins connus, Le Blanc de l'Algérie recrée, à travers leur mort, certains épisodes de la guerre d'Indépendance passés sous silence, éclairant ainsi l'amont de la crise actuelle comme guerre fratricide. Avec ce récit tour à tour élégiaque et dépouillé, Assia Djebar poursuit la quête exigeante, à la fois littéraire, autobiographique et historique qui, de L'Amour, la fantasia à Vaste est la prison, traverse son œuvre romanesque et en fait l'un des écrivains du Maghreb les plus connus dans le monde entier.
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First published January 1, 1995
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About the author
Assia Djebar
38 books383 followersAssia Djebar was born in Algeria to parents from the Berkani tribe of Dahra. She adopted the pen name Assia Djebar when her first novel, La Soif (Hunger) was published in 1957, in France where she was studying at the Sorbonne.
In 1958, she travelled to Tunis, where she worked as a reporter alongside Frantz Fanon, travelling to Algerian refugee camps on the Tunisian border with the Red Cross and Crescent. In 1962, she returned to Algeria to report on the first days of the country's independence.
She settled in Algeria in 1974, and began teaching at the University of Algiers. In 1978, she made a feature film with an Algerian TV company, The Nouba of the Women on Mont Chenoua, which won the critics' prize at Venice. Her second feature, La Zerda, won a prize at Berlin in 1983. In 1995, she took up an academic post at the University of Louisiana, Baton Rouge, and in 2002 was named a Silver Chair at New York University. She is a member of the Belgian Royal Academy and of the Academie Française.
She published her first four novels in France, between 1957 and 1967. These were followed by her Algerian quartet, of which three titles are complete to date, and by her three "novels of exile." Djebar has also published short stories, essay collections and two libretti. All of her writing is in French.
In 1958, she travelled to Tunis, where she worked as a reporter alongside Frantz Fanon, travelling to Algerian refugee camps on the Tunisian border with the Red Cross and Crescent. In 1962, she returned to Algeria to report on the first days of the country's independence.
She settled in Algeria in 1974, and began teaching at the University of Algiers. In 1978, she made a feature film with an Algerian TV company, The Nouba of the Women on Mont Chenoua, which won the critics' prize at Venice. Her second feature, La Zerda, won a prize at Berlin in 1983. In 1995, she took up an academic post at the University of Louisiana, Baton Rouge, and in 2002 was named a Silver Chair at New York University. She is a member of the Belgian Royal Academy and of the Academie Française.
She published her first four novels in France, between 1957 and 1967. These were followed by her Algerian quartet, of which three titles are complete to date, and by her three "novels of exile." Djebar has also published short stories, essay collections and two libretti. All of her writing is in French.
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November 10, 2012A very important book on algeria between the revolution and the civil war. Beautifully and painfully written. Greatly informative. Djebar in general is a must-read if you are interested in Berber culture, feminism, and Algerian studies. Am working on reading all her works. She is a filmmaker too.
July 7, 2023
a year and a half of struggling to read this book, i only made it a quarter way through until the past two days. god’s planning at its finest again, because i needed to read this now and not a moment sooner.
—
assia djebar the woman that you are… other than nizar qabbani’s final poem for his dead wife bilqis, i can think of no eulogy so heartbreakingly beautiful. djebar brings together all the ghosts of her friends and colleagues, the visionaries of algeria’s future, and she whisks their memories together to retrace the events of algeria’s war against colonialism, the murky years following independence, the spiral into a civil war that drove her and her beloved fellow-writers out of their country and some, out of their minds and spirits. she relates her memories with each of these people now passed on, mourns their deaths so eloquently and passionately, ever firmly insisting that the deaths of her friends and the death of algeria were one and the same. she speaks of torturous murders and massacres, quiet deaths in lonely exile from illness and heartbreak… all leaving dark bloodstains on the algerian white. the ending solidified something in me that has only grown the past year, a conviction that all we can do is continue on. to love our country to the last breath, no matter how brutally she eludes us. to give her our love poems, our furious articles, our winding novels filled with the familiar rhythmic song of hope. glory to our martyrs always. i think i’ve healed a wound today.
—
assia djebar the woman that you are… other than nizar qabbani’s final poem for his dead wife bilqis, i can think of no eulogy so heartbreakingly beautiful. djebar brings together all the ghosts of her friends and colleagues, the visionaries of algeria’s future, and she whisks their memories together to retrace the events of algeria’s war against colonialism, the murky years following independence, the spiral into a civil war that drove her and her beloved fellow-writers out of their country and some, out of their minds and spirits. she relates her memories with each of these people now passed on, mourns their deaths so eloquently and passionately, ever firmly insisting that the deaths of her friends and the death of algeria were one and the same. she speaks of torturous murders and massacres, quiet deaths in lonely exile from illness and heartbreak… all leaving dark bloodstains on the algerian white. the ending solidified something in me that has only grown the past year, a conviction that all we can do is continue on. to love our country to the last breath, no matter how brutally she eludes us. to give her our love poems, our furious articles, our winding novels filled with the familiar rhythmic song of hope. glory to our martyrs always. i think i’ve healed a wound today.
August 26, 2007
It was very hard for me to read this book. I was in Algiers during the events taking place in the book/Algiers.
It brought back a lot of memories as well as enlightened me on many events behind the scenes that the regular citizens didn't know about..
It brought back a lot of memories as well as enlightened me on many events behind the scenes that the regular citizens didn't know about..
October 8, 2021
En relisant ce récit, j’ai découvert au fil de ces pages pas mal de choses que je ne connaissais pas ou des choses que ceux qui m’ont en parlé ou que j’ai lus n’ont pas nuancés au point où cela ne m’a même pas marqué.
Au travers de ces pages je sens la souffrance qui a déchiré ce pays, et divisé ces hommes et ces femmes. L’histoire se répétant toujours, l’armée détient toujours les clefs et les richesses de ce pays, et les hommes pour le pouvoir s’entre-déchirent et s’éliminent. Quelque part on souhaiterait voir, ces Algériens comme auparavant, mener une vie d’ascète, sans aucune couleur, et ne rien réclamer. Ces mêmes Algériens qui ont sacrifiés leurs vies pour iriser celles de leurs enfants.
Assia Djebar a su faire partie des deux mondes. Celui des vivants, où elle assistait de jour en jour à la déchéance de ce pays ‘malade de sa république et de sa démocratie’ comme le disait Feu Said Mekbel. Et celui des morts, ou la longue procession de ses amis ‘’tués’’ reviennent toujours la visiter et continuer à échanger des joutes verbales ou à défaut laisser un sourire, une image.
La culture, qui reste un danger pour toutes les personnes régnantes, ne s’élève pas très haut. Dès que les idées de l’un de ces penseurs ou écrivains, prend de la hauteur ; celles-ci sont considérées comme ‘subversives’ et de fait, étêtées.
Nous autres Algériens sommes très pudiques. Nous n’osons jamais avouer notre amour à nos proches ou aux êtres, qui nous sont chers. Ce n’est que lorsque nous faisons face à leur départ et au vide qu’ils ont laissé, que nous aurions souhaité montrer, notre faiblesse, notre amour, notre humanité
Au travers de ces pages je sens la souffrance qui a déchiré ce pays, et divisé ces hommes et ces femmes. L’histoire se répétant toujours, l’armée détient toujours les clefs et les richesses de ce pays, et les hommes pour le pouvoir s’entre-déchirent et s’éliminent. Quelque part on souhaiterait voir, ces Algériens comme auparavant, mener une vie d’ascète, sans aucune couleur, et ne rien réclamer. Ces mêmes Algériens qui ont sacrifiés leurs vies pour iriser celles de leurs enfants.
Assia Djebar a su faire partie des deux mondes. Celui des vivants, où elle assistait de jour en jour à la déchéance de ce pays ‘malade de sa république et de sa démocratie’ comme le disait Feu Said Mekbel. Et celui des morts, ou la longue procession de ses amis ‘’tués’’ reviennent toujours la visiter et continuer à échanger des joutes verbales ou à défaut laisser un sourire, une image.
La culture, qui reste un danger pour toutes les personnes régnantes, ne s’élève pas très haut. Dès que les idées de l’un de ces penseurs ou écrivains, prend de la hauteur ; celles-ci sont considérées comme ‘subversives’ et de fait, étêtées.
Nous autres Algériens sommes très pudiques. Nous n’osons jamais avouer notre amour à nos proches ou aux êtres, qui nous sont chers. Ce n’est que lorsque nous faisons face à leur départ et au vide qu’ils ont laissé, que nous aurions souhaité montrer, notre faiblesse, notre amour, notre humanité
July 4, 2015
A wonderful book ! Exactly what Algeria needs, people that simply talk about what happened based on their own experiences. I really appreciated the fact that the writer came back to the years before the independence, because it is related, the Algerian history post independence finds its roots many years ago...
November 7, 2015
This was beautiful.
A meditation on death and loss, lives taken in the struggle for freedom against the colonial power, against fundamentalism. A meditation on writing and all of its risks, language and all of its meanings, Algeria and all of its tragic complications.
Love and loss, hope and despair.
A travel through memories, like this one:
A town to be loved. I had only just finished The Plague, also set in Oran. Albert Camus writes, with the eyes of a European that must always be comparing the rest of the world to an ideal of home:
There are no Arabs in the Oran found in these pages, though Camus does write of walking through the Negro district (and what does that word mean to him exactly?), 'steep little streets flanked by blue, mauve and saffron-yellow walls... (79) He writes of the plague starting in the poorer and more crowded outskirts, but there are only Spaniards and Frenchmen.
This absence is possibly one of the largest presences in the literature I have read.
To Kader, returning to Oran, Djebar writes:
This town and the town of the Plague -- two Orans, two visions of what a city could and should be.
Camus is in Algerian White as author. His lack of understanding of the complexities. His effort to make peace. His early death in a car accident. She later writes:
I think it true that ordinary life escaped him, you see it in his words.
But he is really the least among this pantheon of writers, too many of whom I still know almost nothing, despite all my recent reading.
But first we return to the theme of dust:
I cried for the death of Mouloud Feraoun, his words still live with me, I almost feel as though I know him. Feraoun, one of six murdered together in two sets of three, machine gunned down, with 109 9 mm cartridge cases found. The son of another there, Jean-Phillipe Ould Aloudia, spent thirty years investigating, identified the assassins granted amnesty by the French State.
Nothing could be done to them.
There is Djebar's chance meeting with Mouloud Mammeri in Algiers, 1988:
I learned about Emir Abdelkader, who fought the colonial invasion, whose bones have been fought over:
There are Franz and Josie Fanon, Jean-el and Taos Amrouche, Kateb Yacine, M'Hamed Boukhobza, Mahfoud Boucebci, Anna Greki, Abdelkader Alloula among many others. And, like Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade , a return to language, nationality, home...the tangle of words and the limits language and culture place on what can be expressed.
Berber
Arabic and then French
This has been Latin, Classic Arabic, Turkish, French, again Arabic...
These are just a few quotes I liked, there is so much more here, particularly for someone who knows more of these writers and the recent history. I am setting out to learn...
Perhaps the best of all, though was this (a facebook update from July 28th, as I mix my social media)
A meditation on death and loss, lives taken in the struggle for freedom against the colonial power, against fundamentalism. A meditation on writing and all of its risks, language and all of its meanings, Algeria and all of its tragic complications.
Love and loss, hope and despair.
A travel through memories, like this one:
I took off for Kader's Oran, the city and its deepest depths, which he had sketched out for me... we drove around the town, splattered with cries and laughter, full of youths (oh, the youths of Oran, everywhere, leaning against a wall, on the vertical, in the sun, at every street corner, watching, laughing, cautious!), our tour was gradually fed by Kader's memories. (21)
A town to be loved. I had only just finished The Plague, also set in Oran. Albert Camus writes, with the eyes of a European that must always be comparing the rest of the world to an ideal of home:
The town itself, let us admit, is ugly. It has a smug, placid air and you need time to discover what it is that makes it different from so many business centres in other parts of the world. How to conjure up a picture, for instance, of a town without pigeons, without any trees or gardens, where you never hear the beat of wings or the rustle of leaves -- a thoroughly negative place in short? ... Our citizens work hard, but solely with the objective of getting rich. (1-2)
There are no Arabs in the Oran found in these pages, though Camus does write of walking through the Negro district (and what does that word mean to him exactly?), 'steep little streets flanked by blue, mauve and saffron-yellow walls... (79) He writes of the plague starting in the poorer and more crowded outskirts, but there are only Spaniards and Frenchmen.
This absence is possibly one of the largest presences in the literature I have read.
To Kader, returning to Oran, Djebar writes:
You must have often unveiled for others the naked, tumultuous and impulsive, raucous, mocking town. (22)
This town and the town of the Plague -- two Orans, two visions of what a city could and should be.
Camus is in Algerian White as author. His lack of understanding of the complexities. His effort to make peace. His early death in a car accident. She later writes:
Camus, an old man: it seems almost as unimaginable as the metaphor of Algeria itself, as a wise adult, calm at last, at last turned toward life, ordinary life... (103)
I think it true that ordinary life escaped him, you see it in his words.
But he is really the least among this pantheon of writers, too many of whom I still know almost nothing, despite all my recent reading.
But first we return to the theme of dust:
Three Algerian days.
White with dust. The dust you didn't notice, on any of these three days, but which seeped its way in, unseen and fine, into all those who came together for your departure.
A dust slowly forming, which gradually makes that day grow fainter, further away, a whiteness which insidiously effaces, distances, and makes each hour almost unreal, and the explosion of a word, the gasp of an ill-repressed sob, the bursting spray of chants and litanies from the crowd, all of the excessive on the day itself, from then on paled, worn hollow to the point of evanescence.
So, white days of that dust in which tens of witnesses, friends, those around you, who went with you to the graveside, they the followers, thereafter caught up; clothed in it stiffly and awkwardly, unknowingly. Dust of oblivion which cauteriuzes, weakens, softens, and .... Dust.
Three days white with that dust and that mortal fog. (51)
I cried for the death of Mouloud Feraoun, his words still live with me, I almost feel as though I know him. Feraoun, one of six murdered together in two sets of three, machine gunned down, with 109 9 mm cartridge cases found. The son of another there, Jean-Phillipe Ould Aloudia, spent thirty years investigating, identified the assassins granted amnesty by the French State.
Nothing could be done to them.
There is Djebar's chance meeting with Mouloud Mammeri in Algiers, 1988:
'Before I saw you in the distance, I was walking with my head in the clouds.. How lovely this city is, iridescent like this! I can't get enough of it: as if it were the first time! I never tire of the facades or the balconies of the houses, and especially not of the sky!... (139-140)
I learned about Emir Abdelkader, who fought the colonial invasion, whose bones have been fought over:
Abdelkader, if he has truly come back to this land where he was first a soldier, will be better able than I to make the list of those who write and who, like so many others, are persecuted, silenced, pushed to suicide, to suffocation, or--through the intermediary if desperate youth, transformed into paid killers--killed by a single blow. (225)
There are Franz and Josie Fanon, Jean-el and Taos Amrouche, Kateb Yacine, M'Hamed Boukhobza, Mahfoud Boucebci, Anna Greki, Abdelkader Alloula among many others. And, like Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade , a return to language, nationality, home...the tangle of words and the limits language and culture place on what can be expressed.
Algerian literature--we must begin it with Apuleus in the second century and continue to Kateb Yacine and Mouloud Mammeri, passing Augustine, the emir Abdelkader, and Camus--has continuously been inscribed in a linguistic triangle.
--a language of rock and soil, the original one let's say. Libyco-Berber, which lost its alphabet momentarily except among the Tuareg:
Berber
--a second language, that of the prestigious exterior, of Mediterranean heritage--Eastern and Western--admittedly reserved for lettered minorities...
Arabic and then French
--the third partner in this triangle presents itself as the most exposed of the languages, the dominant one, the public one, the language of power: that of the harangues, but also the written one of the forensic scientists, the scribes and the notaries.(227-228)
This has been Latin, Classic Arabic, Turkish, French, again Arabic...
These are just a few quotes I liked, there is so much more here, particularly for someone who knows more of these writers and the recent history. I am setting out to learn...
Perhaps the best of all, though was this (a facebook update from July 28th, as I mix my social media)
Today on the tube I met a Maori who asked how I came to be reading Assia Djebar and I told him a quick summary of the long story about this article I can't finish and he told me how in New Zealand his university classes on colonialism had featured a professor who studied violence in Algerian women's fiction, and then we talked about Djebar and Feraoun and Fanon and Paris and damn but did it bring happiness to my day.
August 2, 2025
Kein Brief an Algerien, kein Buch über Algerien, wie die Autorin im Nachwort schreibt. Ein teils bewegendes, teils unerträgliches persönliches Portrait des Lebens und Sterbens algerischer oder in Algerien wirkender oder in Algerien gestorbener Literaten - von Augustinus bis zu Camus und Fanon , von berberischen zu arabischen Dichtern. Eine Prozession der Gespenster in drei Teilen. Die Ermordeten stehen neben den an Krankheit, Unfall, Suizid Gestorbenen.
Andererseits ein über-persönliches Portrait der Kontinuität von Gewalt und Krieg; keine Antwort, nur die über dem weißen Algerien und dem schwarzen Algier schwebende Frage: wieso geht es immer weiter mit Folter, Mord und (Bürger-) Krieg?
Schließlich ein Buch über Sprachen, Sprache, Mehr- und Einsprachigkeit, sicherlich nicht zufällig fast zur selben Zeit wie Derridas "Die Einsprachigkeit des anderen" erschienen.
November 4, 2024
4.5 ⭐️
Spezzacuore
Spezzacuore
January 12, 2025
arrêter de me faire lire des livres trop bien pour les cours, je les aime jamais à leur juste valeur
( bon c'est quand même pour un cours mais c'est ma volonté pour le coup )
( bon c'est quand même pour un cours mais c'est ma volonté pour le coup )
April 17, 2023
This is exactly the type of book I was looking for in my Read around the World challenge. Assia Djebar writes so vulnerably about the friends and colleagues lost during Algeria's fight for independence from France, some assassinated and some lost to ravenous diseases. She begins her narrative with the appearance of 3 lost friends in her room, all who had been assassinated in 1993. She is haunted by them in the daylight and tells of their last day. When I started reading this I did not know that much about Algeria and had to do some supplemental reading to correspond with events in the book.
This book is very much a study of grief, and the first part of the book is so heartbreakingly beautiful. It is very sad and you need to be in the right mood to read it. I also enjoyed her mental debate on the importance of language especially in a country with shifting allegiances. I am so glad I read this but I could see how it wouldn't be for everyone.
This book is very much a study of grief, and the first part of the book is so heartbreakingly beautiful. It is very sad and you need to be in the right mood to read it. I also enjoyed her mental debate on the importance of language especially in a country with shifting allegiances. I am so glad I read this but I could see how it wouldn't be for everyone.
December 25, 2017
Eh. I didn't care much for this book. (I read it for my French class). While it was sad and eye-opening to learn about all the authors and artists who were killed by the French during the Algerian movement for independence, I think it would have been more impactful if I knew who all the authors she mentioned were before I read the book. I really only connected with the assassination of Mouloud Feraoun because we read one of his books earlier in the semester.
June 12, 2015
Haunting book about Algeria post-independence. I couldn't help compare it to Fanon's writing about Algeria pre-independence and how the traumatic battles continued but in new forms. I love Djebar's writing style and always find her work beautiful to read.
February 25, 2024
Powerful! This was written in the midst of the Algerian Civil War, when Islamist terrorists killed thousands of people, targeting the French-speaking educated and writers. Assia Djebar memorializes Algerian writers, starting with friends killed by terrorists and expanding to a broad array of writers and deaths - all untimely silencing. She avoids theatrics and emotionalism, which makes the continued progression of death even more emotionally impactful.
Of the books I've read by Assia Djebar, I find this to be the most accessible. It feels more mature than her earlier works, more sober and even despairing. The idealism and promise of independent Algeria is gone, and she looks back at the Revolution with a critical eye, wondering if the horror of now began then. The repeated theme of white as a symbol of death, silence, oblivion is really well done. She embraces the diversity of Algerian culture and people, including Berber, French, and Arab langage writers, Christians, men and women, even the colonist Camus. I felt immersed in a community reeling from death upon death and in the inner despair while outward life continues on. A lot to ponder here.
Of the books I've read by Assia Djebar, I find this to be the most accessible. It feels more mature than her earlier works, more sober and even despairing. The idealism and promise of independent Algeria is gone, and she looks back at the Revolution with a critical eye, wondering if the horror of now began then. The repeated theme of white as a symbol of death, silence, oblivion is really well done. She embraces the diversity of Algerian culture and people, including Berber, French, and Arab langage writers, Christians, men and women, even the colonist Camus. I felt immersed in a community reeling from death upon death and in the inner despair while outward life continues on. A lot to ponder here.
January 31, 2023
À travers ce livre, Assia Djebar rend hommage à un grand nombre d'écrivains, poètes et intellectuels algériens, qu'elle a connu personnellement ou plus vaguement, tous décédés de diverses causes (allant de la maladie aux assassinats par les terroristes dans les années 90).
J'ai appris énormément de choses, découvert certaines figures intellectuelles que je ne connaissais pas, et bien évidemment toujours autant apprécié la plume d'Assia Djebar.
C'est un livre à lire si vous êtes intéressés par l'histoire de l'Algérie, malgré sa complexité par moment il est d'une grande richesse !
J'ai appris énormément de choses, découvert certaines figures intellectuelles que je ne connaissais pas, et bien évidemment toujours autant apprécié la plume d'Assia Djebar.
C'est un livre à lire si vous êtes intéressés par l'histoire de l'Algérie, malgré sa complexité par moment il est d'une grande richesse !
November 30, 2018
A Beautiful Eulogy
My second Assia Djebar work. She brings each writer to life memorializing them in their deaths. Tribute to the Algerian writers murdered in the war for independence and the Civil War, but so much more. She weaves together their tales and those of others in a patchwork quilt if writing that captures the interconnectedness of Algeria's people and intellectuals. However, many of the allusions were lost on this non-Algerian reader.
My second Assia Djebar work. She brings each writer to life memorializing them in their deaths. Tribute to the Algerian writers murdered in the war for independence and the Civil War, but so much more. She weaves together their tales and those of others in a patchwork quilt if writing that captures the interconnectedness of Algeria's people and intellectuals. However, many of the allusions were lost on this non-Algerian reader.
February 22, 2020
Like Djebar’s other books, this one is an important testament to memory, history, and witnessing. However, it just didn’t resonate with me as much as her other works, which I think was due to the disjointed structure and the fact that, even though she was honoring various writers, their stories only connected over the décennie noire.
August 8, 2020
Ma première lecture de Assia djebar, j'ai trop adoré .
Une merveille . Elle raconté les détails des assassinats de ses chers amis, raconté la guerre ou le combat passés durant la colonisation française et d'autre part la lutte pour l'identité amazigh et le terrorisme. Je le recommande vivement.
Une merveille . Elle raconté les détails des assassinats de ses chers amis, raconté la guerre ou le combat passés durant la colonisation française et d'autre part la lutte pour l'identité amazigh et le terrorisme. Je le recommande vivement.
April 17, 2021
This was a difficult read for me. I suspect it was just that the writing style did not appeal to me at all, and was difficult to follow. The characters seemed to hold little depth, and the story went back and forth between "reality" and "fantasy" in a way that I struggled with.
August 30, 2024
A really important book that led me to some other great writers like Camus. Unfortunately I found it a difficult read it took a lot of concentration I would describe it as densely worded. But the subject matter kept me interested.
July 24, 2018
Un récit plein d'encre et du sang !
September 18, 2019
read for trauma and memory in maghrebi and middle eastern lit class
Want to read
March 11, 2021Algeria
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 16, 2021
(3.5)
C'est douleureux
C'est douleureux
April 29, 2023
Reading the World: Algeria
March 21, 2025
Une douce poésie qui contrebalance avec une extrême violence ; c'est un récit de mort et de deuil, c'est l'histoire d'un passé au présent de l'autrice ; c'est le Blanc de l'Algérie.
Want to read
June 8, 2025algeria
March 15, 2017
I loved the premise, but I could not handle the disjointed accretion of clauses and parentheticals, which produced such an arrhythmic flow of words that I stopped 30 pages into the book.
February 13, 2017
I found this very heavy going. Her style of writing did not make for an easy read - particularly the first 50 or so pages which were a sort of stream of consciousness. A very sad litany of deaths and so personally written but I found it very difficult to follow the who and why of it all. I guess it was just not quite what I was expecting.
December 24, 2012
Having re-read this book and many others on Algeria, I have had my misgivings for giving it such a strong recommendation earlier. The problem with the book is not so much that the horror described - the assassinations of so many Algerian intellectuals and democrats - is not accurate. What is missing is any sense of who was behind these killings. The impression given in the book is that all this was the work of crazed Islamic fundamentalists...over the past decade however, it has become clearer that these crazed Islamic fundamentalists were infiltrated and run by what is called `the DRS' (Direction de Recherches et Securite) - Algeria's internal security apparatus; there is nothing in Assia Djebar's writing to suggest the extraordinary degree to which the Algerian Civil war of the 1990s was manipulated by the military-security junta that ran the government then and now. And as such, it distorts the history of that period.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews