The Lovers of Algeria

Posted on 26 January 2017 by Anouar Benmalek

A breathless story of love and survival in war torn Algeria past and presentThe devil has entered our country, and his footprints are everywhere.Nine year old Jallal is old enough to know that his life in Algeria is precarious at best Having run away from home, he survives by selling peanuts and single cigarettes on the street The proposal by the elderly Swiss woman named Anna is shocking and preposterous go to the mountains with her, as a translator, so she can find her lost lover from decades ago and pray over the graves of their murdered children.Anna and Jallal s journey is wrought with danger and unspeakable tragedy It was under similar circumstances that Anna first met the Arab Nasreddine Ousted from the traveling circus where she performed as a trapeze artist, she had little choice but to accept Nasreddine s dangerous offer to live with him in a makeshift tent But it was here, amid poverty, racism, and terrifyingly random violence, that they fell in love.A best seller in France, The Lovers of Algeria is an unflinchingly candid story about a country where terrorism and government corruption are commonplace As Anna and Nasreddine, beaten by time and memory, circle each other in Algeria, Anouar Benmalek shows with heart wrenching detail that love can endure even the most inhuman conditions.A Lannan Translation Series Selection Free Download The Lovers of Algeria By Anouar Benmalek For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr It s the war for Independence by the Arabs against France in the 1950 s That s a bad time for a French Swiss woman, a circus acrobat, to fall in love with and marry an Arab man They will both be under suspicion and hated by both side in the conflict I m reminded of another book I reviewed, The Painter of Battles by Arturo Perez Reverte, where a Serbian Croatian couple doesn t survive the Serb Croat conflict And of course it happens he is captured and tortured by the French under suspicion It s the war for Independence by the Arabs against France in the 1950 s That s a bad time for a French Swiss woman, a circus acrobat, to fall in love with and marry an Arab man They will both be under suspicion and hated by both side in the conflict I m reminded of another book I reviewed, The Painter of Battles by Arturo Perez Reverte, where a Serbian Croatian couple doesn t survive the Serb Croat conflict And of course it happens he is captured and tortured by the French under suspicion of Arab terrorism even though he was not involved in the conflict Their two children are brutally killed and she ...The Lovers of Algeria is a horrifyingly vivid, achingly tragic novel with, at its core, a fragile and imperfect love story spanning decades of loss, relocation, and hopeful discovery in its North African setting The story, told in overlapping flashbacks and contemporary 1997 scenes, is too involved to recite, but it should be enough to say that Anna...NO SPOILERS Last night I finished this book I simply had to digest it a bit before summarizing my views I have chosen three stars, but pay attention when I say this is definitely a book to read It does have faults These weighed in when I reduced the four to three stars The book very well describes the pandemonium of Algerian life during the 1900s from the pov of Arabs This is how life was for those down and under In this is thrown a Swiss who loves an Arab and she is too drowned in the ho NO SPOILERS Last night I finished this book I simply had to digest it a bit before summarizing my views I have chosen three stars, but pay attent..., , , , , , , , ,, ,, , , , ,,, , , ,,, ,, , .4 ,8 , , , , It s hard to say I liked this book, because there is a lot of violence in the book not so much to the personal characters, as political and religious violence that takes place in Alergia in the background to the story and swirling around and in and out of the story , but, well, it s a good book The main story of the book of a love story that starts in the 1940s and involves the unexpected charcaters of a very poor Berber living in Algiers and a displaced French woman no longer in a tra...Well what a book I have to be honest, this book was nothing like I imagined I was lulled into a false sense of a happy love story Yet after only a few pages in those happy thoughts were torn from my brain Replaced with a horrific gut wrenching oh my God Based around a story of two people who fall in love, the majority of the story takes place in Algeria during and after the occupation.This book is so graphic that at times I literally felt sick It shocked me how little I really understoo Well what a book I have to be honest, this book was nothing like I imagined I was lulled into a false sense of a happy love story Yet after only a few pages in those happy thoughts were torn from my brain Replaced with a horrific gut...I hesitated reading a book about Algeria, because I know of so many real horror stories that happened there But trying to follow the Middle East Reading Challenge, I had to dare.Wow, that was quite a book Very heart breaking with beautiful human characters focused on loving, come what may, with in the background yes the all too common horror stories and what s going on there terrorism, relationships between white people and natives, government corruption, dealings between Algerian and French I hesitated reading a book about Algeria, because I know of so many real horror stories that happened there But trying to follow the Middle East Reading Challenge, I had to dare.Wow, that was quite a book Very heart breaking with beautiful human characters focused on loving, come what may, with in the background yes the all too common horror stories and what s going on there terrorism, relationships between white people and natives, government corruption, dealings between Algerian and Fre...Although rather brutal in certain parts though historically accurate I believe , the language and plot in this book were exquisite I especially liked the beginning of the book, and the ending which pulled all of the threads together into a wonderful tapestry The devel...From Reading the World List I didn t know anything about the war of Independence in Algeria The cruelty of the people both from the government forces, the French and the rebel groups was disturbing to me.Story of Algeria after Independence through that of a couple, Anna, a Swiss circus performer and Nasreddine, an Algerian, who meet, marry, and are separated by Anna s deportation back to Switzerland after Independence Decades later, after the death of her Swiss husband, she returns to Algeria, and with Jallal, a street urchin, journeys to find the graves of her children and hopefully find her husband She sends him a telegram saying that she will be at his mother s house in the mountains They Sto...

English
26 January 2017

Anouar Benmalek