11 Best New Algerian War Books To Read In 2022
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Loading... - Basem Touati
- 09 Aug 2022
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1
The Art of Losing
A Novel
Alice Zeniter, Frank Wynne(You?)|Mar 22, 2022|
Across three generations, three wars, two continents, and the mythic waters of the Mediterranean, one family’s history leads to an inevitable question: What price do our descendants pay for the choices that we make? Naïma knows Algeria only by the artifacts she encounters in her grandparents’ tiny apartment in Normandy: the language her grandmother speaks but Naïma can’t understand, the food her grandmother cooks, and the precious things her grandmother carried when they fled. Naïma’s father claims to remember nothing; he has made himself French. Her grandfather died before he could tell her his side of the story.
But now Naïma will travel to Algeria to see for herself what was left behind―including their secrets. The Algerian War for Independence sent Naïma’s grandfather on a journey of his own, from wealthy olive grove owner and respected veteran of the First World War, to refugee spurned as a harki by his fellow Algerians in the transit camps of southern France, to immigrant barely scratching out a living in the north. The long battle against colonial rule broke apart communities, opened deep rifts within families, and saw the whims of those in even temporary power instantly overturn the lives of ordinary people. Where does Naïma’s family fit into this history? How do they fit into France’s future?Alice Zeniter’s The Art of Losing is a powerful, moving family novel that spans three generations across seventy years and two shores of the Mediterranean Sea. It is a resonant people’s history of Algeria and its diaspora. It is a story of how we carry on in the face of loss: loss of country, identity, language, connection. Most of all, it is an immersive, riveting excavation of the inescapable legacies of colonialism, immigration, family, and war. (show less)
2
The Algerian War Retold
Of Camus’s Revolt and Postwar Reconciliation
Meaghan Emery(You?)|Dec 13, 2021|
3
Evaluating Insurgency External Support Through the French-algerian War, Vietnam War, and Islamic State
U.S Naval Postgraduate School, U.S Navy(You?)|Jul 7, 2021|
The purpose of this thesis is to explore the role of external support for insurgencies, with particular emphasis on the Islamic State (IS). The research evaluates such support during the French–Algerian War, the Vietnam War, and the current war with IS utilizing a model from a 2001 RAND book titled Trends in Outside Support for Insurgent Movements. The book identifies the following external support elements: safe haven and transit, financial resources, political support, propaganda, and direct military support.
As this analysis will show, indirect military support (unintentional and or unknowing) is just as relevant today as direct military support. This thesis identifies patterns and vulnerabilities of external support for IS and assesses the current relevance of the 2001 model outlined in the RAND book. Analysis of three case studies reveals continuity among all three in patterns and areas of vulnerability regarding safe haven and transit, financial resources, and propaganda; political and direct military support appear to be less relevant to IS than to prior insurgencies. The current information era, dispersed support, the role of natural resources, and non-state actors have changed the profile of external support for insurgencies today. This thesis recommends improving the condition of fragile states to prevent safe havens for IS, reclaiming territory from IS, and implementing UN sanctions to cease IS financial support. Political pressure and the elimination of non-state support could also deter states from directly or indirectly supporting IS. Further, IS propaganda could be diminished through a global antipropaganda campaign. Finally, strengthening alliances could prevent state and non-state actors from covertly or indirectly providing military support to IS.
4
Sex, France, and Arab Men, 1962–1979
Todd Shepard(You?)|Jun 19, 2021|
The aftermath of Algeria’s revolutionary war for independence coincided with the sexual revolution in France, and in this book Todd Shepard argues that these two movements are inextricably linked.​ Sex, France, and Arab Men is a history of how and why—from the upheavals of French Algeria in 1962 through the 1970s—highly sexualized claims about Arabs were omnipresent in important public French discussions, both those that dealt with sex and those that spoke of Arabs. Shepard explores how the so-called sexual revolution took shape in a France profoundly influenced by the ongoing effects of the Algerian revolution.
Shepard’s analysis of both events alongside one another provides a frame that renders visible the ways that the fight for sexual liberation, usually explained as an American and European invention, developed out of the worldwide anticolonial movement of the mid-twentieth century. (show less)
5
Writing the Black Decade
Conflict and Criticism in Francophone Algerian Literature
Joseph Ford(You?)|Jan 28, 2021|
Writing the Black Decade: Conflict and Criticism in Francophone Algerian Literature examines how literature—and the way we read, classify, and critique literature—impacts our understanding of the world at a time of conflict. Using the bitterly-contested Algerian Civil War as a case study, Joseph Ford argues that, while literature is frequently understood as an illuminating and emancipatory tool, it can, in fact, restrain our understanding of the world during a time of crisis and further entrench the polarized discourses that lead to conflict in the first place.
Ford demonstrates how Francophone Algerian literature, along with the cultural and academic criticism that has surrounded it, has mobilized visions of Algeria over the past thirty years that often belie the complex and multi-layered realities of power, resistance, and conflict in the region. Scholars of literature, history, Francophone studies, and international relations will find this book particularly useful. Read More...
