Paul Legg
Don’t Be Fooled
Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed
By Martin Evans and John Phillips
Yale University Press 351pp £19.99 order from our bookshop
You don't expect a modern history of Algeria to be a book with a lot of jokes in it. Surprisingly, Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed by Martin Evans and John Phillips has many. But they are of the blackest variety and quoted by the authors to illustrate the utter terror the Algerian people ‘lived through’ (if they were fortunate) during much of the 1990s when, after the army had moved to stop the Islamic Salvation Front, or FIS, taking power through the ballot box, more than 150,000 people, mostly innocent civilians, were killed.
One of the most ‘popular’ stories on the Algerian streets at the height of the bloodletting is worth recounting. A man, stopped at a roadblock, is asked whether he supports the army or the Islamists. Not knowing what to reply, he finally says, ‘the army’, only to have an ear
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Perhaps, rather than having diagnosed a real societal malaise, she has merely projected onto an entire generation a neurosis that actually affects only a small number of people.'
@HoumanBarekat on Patricia Lockwood's 'No One is Talking About This'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/culturecrisis
*Offer ends in TWO days*
Take advantage of our February offer: a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/
'Nourished on a diet of exceptionalism and meritocracy, millennials internalised the harmful falsehood that hard work necessarily yields success. The very least they should settle for is a "cool job", one that ... is the focus of their "passion".'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/workers-twerkers