In this newest installment of the Inspector Llob series, chronologically the “pre-quel” to the series, author Yasmina Khadra turns a spotlight on Algeria’s devastated country and its demoralized citizens. Khadra, who admitted his real identity in 2001, is, in reality, Mohammed Moulessehoul, an Algerian army officer/writer who escaped censorship by seeking refuge in France in 2000. His main character, Superintendent Llob, is also a writer—an honest police official who does not compromise. When the chauffeur of a wealthy and influential man is shot to death in Algiers and the gun used matches the gun of Lino, Llob’s assistant, Lino is arrested, sent to a hellish dungeon, and kept incommunicado, even from Llob. Another murder sends Llob into the hinterlands with journalist/history professor Soria Karadach, a researcher studying the month of August 1962, immediately following the end of the war, especially in Sidi Ba, a small town in which a massacre occurred. Eventually, the events of Sidi Ba and the arrest of Lino converge, and though the details of the plot are extremely complex, especially for those of us who may not be familiar with the finer points of the Algerian Civil War, the novel is carefully constructed, and the mystery is fully resolved. For those who enjoy complex noir mysteries set in unusual locations with main characters one comes to care about, this mystery is both challenging and enlightening.
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Algerian author Amara Lakhous, now an Italian resident, pens a sly satire of an immigrant’s life in Italy, using the murder of a young man in the elevator of an apartment building adjacent to Piazza Vittorio as the catalyst through which he explores the hidden and not-so-hidden prejudices of Roman residents toward “outsiders.” The victim, Lorenzo Manfredini, also known as the Gladiator, drew nasty pictures, wrote obscenities, and urinated in the building’s elevator, earning the enmity of every resident. When the police investigate, each of the residents and merchants in the immediate vicinity tells his story, revealing hidden agendas and casual resentments against immigrants. Amedeo, a respected resident thought to be an Italian volunteer helping immigrants deal with Roman bureaucracy, is sought for the crime. No one has seen him since the murder.
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Menaour Ziada, an old soldier living in a town near the capital of a country presumed to be Algeria, observes lights at night in a nearby, previously unoccupied, house. Bored, and fearful of “dangerous conspirators,” he alerts his acquaintances, all former veterans of the civil war who have vowed “to struggle till their dying breath never to let the flame of patriotism in them be snuffed out.” In fact, the house is being used temporarily only by Mahfoud, a young physics teacher, putting the finishing touches on his invention of a new loom, which he wants to patent. Alerted to the “suspicious” activities, however, the bureaucracy soon turns Mahfoud’s life into a nightmare in which he must battle unknown enemies, the status quo, and officials who themselves fear being tainted by the accusations against him. Recreating the traumas that Third World citizens face every day, Djaout offers vivid pictures of their complex but fragile lives.
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Posted in 1950 - 1999, Algeria on Jun 13th, 2009
It is profoundly affecting to read a book which is not in its final form because its author was assassinated. Doubly moving for the reader is this book’s warning cry against mindless practitioners of fundamentalist oppression, the very people responsible for the author’s death in Algeria. Algerian journalist Tahar Djaout clearly knew he was in danger, knew why he was in danger, and knew why he, along with other writers and artists, represented a threat to single-minded fanatics in his country, yet he continued to create, leaving behind this final book, a legacy not just to compatriots who might feel like lonely soldiers against intolerance, but to lovers of books throughout the world who sometimes take for granted the power and glory of a free press.
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Opening in 1955, when the French are battling insurgents to keep control of Algeria, Anna, a Swiss resident and former circus performer, and Nassreddine, a Berber from the Aures mountains of Algeria, are traveling by bus from his remote mountain village to Algiers to formalize their marriage. As the bus makes its way through the countryside, it is “fair game” for any faction who can set up a roadblock. The many factions within Algeria make it impossible to tell friend from foe, and innocent civilians are often caught up in the crossfire. Nassreddine is arrested and tortured unmercifully, and Anna returns to Switzerland. Alternating back and forth in time, author Benmalek traces the lives of Anna and Nassreddine and their parents, separately and together for seventy years, and in the process gives a political and social history of Algeria from 1928 through 1997.
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