What do you think?
Rate this book
Carnets d'Orient #1-5
Carnets d'Orient : Premier cycle
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
8 people are currently reading
60 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 9, 2013
This must be one of the most ambitious bande-dessinée projects of the 80s and 90s – an attempt to tell the whole story of French Algeria from colonisation in 1830 right up to the eve of the war of independence. The author, Jacques Ferrandez – himself a pied noir from Algiers – spent nine years working on it, and the five volumes collected in this edition dart happily between adventure, romance, political commentary, and family drama, all the time with a careful eye on historical detail.
The style is in the classical Franco-Belgian comics tradition – precise lines, lots of visual detail, rather brighter colours than you see in more modern authors. Different kinds of lettering are used effectively to distinguish between French and Arabic.
Each volume is a generation further on, increasingly focusing on the same family through the years. It's surprisingly moving to see characters portrayed as little children, grown adults, and then old men and women in consecutive books – somehow the artwork brings this home to you in a different way than the effects produced by, let's say, novelistic family sagas.
My favourite volume was the fourth, which centres on the centenary of l'Algérie française in 1930 – perhaps because it's about a reporter struggling morally with what his editors are expecting him to say, something I can well relate to. Ferrandez's story concentrates on the pieds noirs but his main sympathies are reserved for the Arab population, whose increasingly untenable position through the 30s, 40s and 50s is once again made depressingly obvious. He wrote a second cycle of the Carnets d'Orient in the 2000s, covering the years of the Algerian War, but I've read so much about the war recently that I'm not sure I can take that right now.
The style is in the classical Franco-Belgian comics tradition – precise lines, lots of visual detail, rather brighter colours than you see in more modern authors. Different kinds of lettering are used effectively to distinguish between French and Arabic.
Each volume is a generation further on, increasingly focusing on the same family through the years. It's surprisingly moving to see characters portrayed as little children, grown adults, and then old men and women in consecutive books – somehow the artwork brings this home to you in a different way than the effects produced by, let's say, novelistic family sagas.
My favourite volume was the fourth, which centres on the centenary of l'Algérie française in 1930 – perhaps because it's about a reporter struggling morally with what his editors are expecting him to say, something I can well relate to. Ferrandez's story concentrates on the pieds noirs but his main sympathies are reserved for the Arab population, whose increasingly untenable position through the 30s, 40s and 50s is once again made depressingly obvious. He wrote a second cycle of the Carnets d'Orient in the 2000s, covering the years of the Algerian War, but I've read so much about the war recently that I'm not sure I can take that right now.
October 14, 2022
Extraordinaire fresque qui permet de poser le contexte dans lequel la colonisation de l'Algérie par la France s'est faite et de quelle manière. De percevoir aussi les relations historiques entre colons, colonisés, communautés .. qui donnent à comprendre aussi le terreau sur lequel se sont agrégées la suite des événements.
April 1, 2024
Alger, 1836. Plongeons dans la conquête de l'Algérie.
Bd d'une grande qualité, documentée, très bien dessinée comme des extraits d'un carnet d'artiste. Jacques Fernandez fait un récit nuancé de cette histoire algérienne.
Cette bande dessinée, en plusieurs tomes, retrace la vie sous l'Algérie française sur plusieurs générations de 1830 à 1962. Les planches sont magnifiques, les dessins orientalistes nous transportent de l'autre côté de la Méditerranée, des impressions et des sensations de voyage, un parfum d'Orient.
Une très belle série lue il y a de nombreuses années donc je ne m'en souviens pas très bien. A relire.
Bd d'une grande qualité, documentée, très bien dessinée comme des extraits d'un carnet d'artiste. Jacques Fernandez fait un récit nuancé de cette histoire algérienne.
Cette bande dessinée, en plusieurs tomes, retrace la vie sous l'Algérie française sur plusieurs générations de 1830 à 1962. Les planches sont magnifiques, les dessins orientalistes nous transportent de l'autre côté de la Méditerranée, des impressions et des sensations de voyage, un parfum d'Orient.
Une très belle série lue il y a de nombreuses années donc je ne m'en souviens pas très bien. A relire.
January 1, 2026
Super BD sur les relations franco algériennes pendant toute la période de 1830 jusqu'à la guerre d'indépendance. Superbes dessins, personnages... Trop trop bien j'achèterai tous les tomes si je peux
July 29, 2014
amazing portraiture
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews