Books about Algerian from Amazon.com

In this stunning novel, Assia Djebar intertwines the history of her native Algeria with episodes from the life of a young girl in a story stretching from the French conquest in 1830 to the War of Liberation of the 1950s. The girl, growing up in the old Roman coastal town of Cherchel, sees her life in contrast to that of a neighboring French family, and yearns for more than law and tradition allow her to experience. Headstrong and passionate, she escapes from the cloistered life of her family to join her brother in the maquis' fight against French domination. Djebar's exceptional descriptive powers bring to life the experiences of girls and women caught up in the dual struggle for independence - both their own and Algeria's..
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Leila Sebbar's novel recounts an event in French history that has been hidden for many years. Toward the end of the Algerian war, the FLN, an Algerian nationalist party, organized a demonstration in Paris to oppose a curfew imposed upon Algerians in France. About 30,000 Algerians gathered peacefully, but the protest was brutally suppressed by the Paris police. Between 50 and 200 Algerians were killed and their bodies were thrown into the Seine. This incident provides the background for a more intimate look into the history of violence between France and Algeria.Following three young protagonists - one French, one Algerian, and one French national of Algerian descent - Sebbar takes readers on a journey of discovery and comprehension. Mildred Mortimer's impressive translation conveys the power of Sebbar's words in English and allows English-speaking readers an opportunity to understand the complex relationship between past and present, metropole and colony, immigrant and citizen, that lies at the heart of this acclaimed novel..
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In this account of the Algerian War's effect on French political structures and notions of national identity, Todd Shepard asserts that the separation of Algeria from France was truly a revolutionary event with lasting consequences for French social and political life.

For more than a century, Algeria had been legally and administratively part of France; after the bloody war that concluded in 1962, it was other--its eight million Algerian residents deprived of French citizenship while hundreds of thousands of French pieds noirs were forced to return to a country that was never home. This rupture violated the universalism that had been the essence of French republican theory since the late eighteenth century. Shepard contends that because the amputation of Algeria from the French body politic was accomplished illegally and without explanation, its repercussions are responsible for many of the racial and religious tensions that confront France today.

In portraying decolonization as an essential step in the inexorable "tide of history," the French state absolved itself of responsibility for the revolutionary change it was effecting. It thereby turned its back not only on the French of Algeria--Muslims in particular--but also on its own republican principles and the 1958 Constitution. From that point onward, debates over assimilation, identity, and citizenship--once focused on the Algerian "province/colony"--have troubled France itself. In addition to grappling with questions of race, citizenship, national identity, state institutions, and political debate, Shepard also addresses debates in Jewish history, gender history, and queer theory..
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Algerian migration to France began at the end of the 19th century, but in recent years France's Algerian community has been the focus of a shifting public debate encompassing issues of unemployment, multiculturalism, Islam, and terrorism In this finely crafted historical and anthropological study, Paul A. Silverstein examines a wide range of social and cultural forms - from immigration policy, colonial governance, and urban planning to corporate advertising, sports, literary narratives, and songs - for what they reveal about postcolonial Algerian subjectivities. Investigating the connection between anti-immigrant racism and the rise of Islamist and Berberist ideologies among the "second generation" ("Beurs"), he argues that the appropriation of these cultural-political projects by Algerians in France represents a critique of notions of European or Mediterranean unity and elucidates the mechanisms by which the Algerian civil war has been transferred onto French soil..
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It is hard to convey the public impact of France's war to maintain her colonial grip on Algeria; yet in the late 1950s this ugly conflict dominated Europe's media to almost the same extent as would Vietnam ten years later. It brought France to the very verge of military coup d'etat; it destroyed thousands of careers; bitterly divided the French military and political classes for a generation; and sent hundreds of thousands of European settler families into often ruinous exile. This title details the history, organisation, equipment and uniforms of the forces involved..
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This unique cookbook relates the story of the Pied Noir or 'Black feet', Sephardic Jews from the North African nation of Algeria. The cuisine of the Peid Noir reflects a storied history: Expelled from Spain, and later forced to flee Algeria, their cookery was influenced by the nations they inhabited, as well as the trade routes that passed through these areas. Over the centuries, they collected recipes and flavours that came to form a unique and little-known culinary repertoire. The 85 recipes in this fascinating book are accompanied by a history of the Pied Noir and the story of the author's family. A glossary of culinary terms and menus for Pied Noir feasts are also included..
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Assia Djebar, the most distinguished woman writer to emerge from the Arab world-and a top candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature-wrote Children of the New World following her own involvement in the Algerian resistance to colonial French rule. This long-overdue first English translation coincides with the 50th anniversary of the start of the Algerian war and with the growing insurgency in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East.

Like the classic film The Battle of Algiers-enjoying renewed interest in the face of world events-Djebar's novel sheds light on current world conflicts as it reveals a determined Arab insurgency against foreign occupation, from the inside out.

However, Djebar focuses on the experiences of women drawn into the politics of resistance. Her novel recounts the interlocking lives of women in a rural Algerian town who find themselves joined in solidarity and empower each other to engage in the fight for independence. Narrating the resistance movement from a variety of perspectives-from those of traditional wives to liberated students to political organizers-Djebar powerfully depicts the circumstances that drive oppressed communities to violence and at the same time movingly reveals the tragic costs of war.

Renowned writer and filmmaker Assia Djebar has authored several novels, including the critically lauded So Vast the Prison and Algerian White. She has won several awards for her work, including the prestigious International Neustadt Prize for Literature. Born and raised in Algeria, Djebar is currently the Silver Chair of French at New York University.

Marjolijn de Jager, PhD, is the translator of Djebar's Algerian White and Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, which was honored by the American Literary Translators Association. She teaches at the Center for Foreign Languages and Translation at New York University.

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In this nuanced study of the performance of cultural identity, Jane E. Goodman travels from contemporary Kabyle Berber communities in Algeria and France to the colonial archives, identifying the products, performances, and media through which Berber identity has developed. In the 1990s, with a major Islamist insurgency underway in Algeria, Berber cultural associations created performance forms that challenged Islamist premises while critiquing their own village practices.Goodman describes the phenomenon of new Kabyle song, a form of world music that transformed village songs for global audiences. She follows new songs as they move from their producers to the copyright agency to the Parisian stage, highlighting the networks of circulation and exchange through which Berbers have achieved global visibility. Jane E. Goodman is Associate Professor of Communication and Culture at Indiana University. While training to become a cultural anthropologist, she also performed with the women's world music group Libana..
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Here both the student and the lay reader will learn more of a "man of letters" who in both his life and his work embraced the sun, the sea, sensualtiy, soccer and the theater as the solutions to life's "absurdity.".
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