Books about Algerian from Amazon.com

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..
Price: $19.34 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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..
Price: $8.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

When Barbary pirates captured an obscure Yankee sailing brig off the coast of North Africa in 1812, enslaving eleven American sailors, President James Madison first tried to settle the issue through diplomacy. But when these efforts failed, he sent the largest American naval force ever
gathered to that time, led by the heroic Commodore Stephen Decatur, to end Barbary terror once and for all.
Drawing upon numerous ship logs, journals, love letters, and government documents, Frederick C. Leiner paints a vivid picture of the world of naval officers and diplomats in the early nineteenth century, as he recreates a remarkable and little known episode from the early American republic.
Leiner first describes Madison's initial efforts at diplomacy, sending Mordecai Noah to negotiate, reasoning that the Jewish Noah would fare better with the Islamic leader. But when the ruler refused to ransom the Americans--"not for two millions of dollars"--Madison declared war and sent a fleet to
North Africa. Decatur's squadron dealt quick blows to the Barbary navy, dramatically fighting and capturing two ships. Decatur then sailed to Algiers. He refused to go ashore to negotiate--indeed, he refused to negotiate on any essential point. The ruler of Algiers signed the treaty--in Decatur's
words, "dictated at the mouths of our cannon"--in twenty-four hours. The United States would never pay tribute to the Barbary world again, and the captive Americans were set free--although in a sad, ironic twist, they never arrived home, their ship being lost at sea in heavy weather.
Here then is a real-life naval adventure that will thrill fans of Patrick O'Brian, a story of Islamic terrorism, white slavery, poison gas, diplomatic intrigue, and battles with pirates on the high seas..
Price: $6.51 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A Pied Noir Cookbook provides a window into this fascinating cuisine, including such dishes as Couscous aux Haricots Blancs (Couscous with White Beans), turmeric-flavored Boeuf aux Oignons (Beef with Onions), Vol au Vent Chicken (Chicken in white wine sauce), and Mekroud (Date Fritters). These rustic family recipes are complemented with the story of the author's family, cultural anecdotes, a history of Algerian Jews and the author's quest to preserve her family traditions.

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 Pied Noir reflects their storied history: Expelled from Spain, and later forced to flee Algeria, their cooking 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 flavors that came to form a unique and little-known culinary repertoire of dishes marked by Spanish and North African flavors blended with French culinary techniques..
Price: $16.36 [Notify me when price goes down.]

". . . this is an important call that diaspora should become as important a theme in North African history as it has been in that of sub-Saharan Africa." --H-Africa, Dec. 2006

"This is work of impressive erudition which is richly documented, theoretically sophisticated, and epistemologically provocative in that it situates itself firmly on a transnational axis linking France and Algeria across the Mediterranean." --Susan Terrio

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.

New Anthropologies of Europe--Daphne Berdahl, Matti Bunzl, and Michael Herzfeld, editors.
Price: $14.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book is a major contribution to our understanding of the condition of the immigrant and it will transform the reader’s understanding of the issues surrounding immigration. Sayad’s book will be widely used in courses on race, ethnicity, immigration and identity in sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, politics and geography.

an outstanding and original work on the experience of immigration and the kind of suffering involved in living in a society and culture which is not one’s own;

describes how immigrants are compelled, out of respect for themselves and the group that allowed them to leave their country of origin, to play down the suffering of emigration;

Abdelmalek Sayad, was an Algerian scholar and close associate of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu - after Sayad’s death, Bourdieu undertook to assemble these writings for publication;

this book will transform the reader’s understanding of the issues surrounding immigration.

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Price: $23.18 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In this original reading of Albert Camus' novels, short stories, and political essays, David Carroll concentrates on Camus' conflicted relationship with his Algerian background and finds important critical insights into questions of justice, the effects of colonial oppression, and the deadly cycle of terrorism and counterterrorism that characterized the Algerian War and continues to surface in the devastation of postcolonial wars today.

During France's "dirty war" in Algeria, Camus called for an end to the violence perpetrated against civilians by both France and the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) and supported the creation of a postcolonial, multicultural, and democratic Algeria. His position was rejected by most of his contemporaries on the Left and has, ironically, earned him the title of colonialist sympathizer as well as the scorn of important postcolonial critics.

Carroll rescues Camus' work from such criticism by emphasizing the Algerian dimensions of his literary and philosophical texts and by highlighting in his novels and short stories his understanding of both the injustice of colonialism and the tragic nature of Algeria's struggle for independence. By refusing to accept that the sacrifice of innocent human lives can ever be justified, even in the pursuit of noble political goals, and by rejecting simple, ideological binaries (West vs. East, Christian vs. Muslim, "us" vs. "them," good vs. evil), Camus' work offers an alternative to the stark choices that characterized his troubled times and continue to define our own.

"What they didn't like, was the Algerian, in him," Camus wrote of his fictional double in The First Man. Not only should "the Algerian" in Camus be "liked," Carroll argues, but the Algerian dimensions of his literary and political texts constitute a crucial part of their continuing interest. Carroll's reading also shows why Camus' critical perspective has much to contribute to contemporary debates stemming from the global "war on terror."

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Price: $23.60 [Notify me when price goes down.]