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Now entering its eighth year, the civil war in Algeria shows no sign of imminent resolution. Yet little has been written about the conflict, its various participants, and the opinions of Algerians -indeed, even about what exactly is being fought over. Restrictions on movement within Algeria have severely limited the ability of foreign journalists to analyze these issues, and there has been a paucity of firsthand accounts of how the conflict has played out across Algeria.Now, one of Europe´s leading authorities on contemporary Algerian politics has gained the kind of access necessary to present a clear, evenhanded account. The author interviewed residents in places in which few journalists have set foot: the impoverished suburbs of the major cities and the infamous "Triangle of Death" -the stronghold of the Armed Islamic Group and the scene of some of the worst carnage. Rather than presenting a historical account, The Algerian Civil War focuses on the strategies employed by the war´s main combatants, seeking to understand the significance of the conflict to all parties embroiled in it. ... Read more

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Much better than expected
I work on Algeria issues as a big part of my job so I picked up this book at the library.I was expecting it to be a tedious academic study without much in there for someone who has to deal with the real world.Surprisingly, it was readable and very interesting. I highly recommend this to anyone who either has to work in Algeria commercially (and could use some cultural/political insight) or who has a broader counter-insurgency or Middle East interest. ... Read more

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UNBOWED spotlights the culture wars in the Middle East between progressive, democratic, feminist forces on the one hand and, on the other, the forces of traditional culture represented, at the extreme, by religious fanatics. Author Khalida Messaoudi has been active in Algerian politics since 1993, but due to threats to her life, now lives in hiding. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

good book
Unbowed: An Algerian Woman Confronts Islamic Fundamentalism by Khalida Messaoudi is an important book.

The bad side is that the world does not realize that the arab world treats woman as third-class citizens.That is a disgrace.

An angry patriot talks
This book consists of a series of conversations between the journalist Elisabeth Schemla and the Algerian feminist Khalida Messaoudi. The conversations are organized into chapters according to topic. It is most interesting for the general reader when Messaoudi is describing her childhood and education. Later chapters focusing on her political struggles require the reader to have extensive background knowledge of modern Algerian politics in order to make sense of them. The repeated use of abbreviations in the book tends to be rather annoying for readers who aren't familiar with Algerian politics. They are explained in a glossary at the end. If you want an insider's view of Algerian politics of 1980s and 1990s, you must read this book. If you are simply looking for tales of an ordinary woman's life (or even an extraordinary woman's life) in Algeria, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Unbowed:An Algerian Woman Confronts Islamic Fundamentalism
Born in 1958, a red-headed, highly-educated and fiercely secular Berber, Messaoudi has established herself as one of Algeria's bravest and most articulate speakers of truth.In a series of interviewers with a French journalist, capably translated into English, she presents a pungent, invaluable first-hand exposé of the Islamist challenge in her country. Its every-day texture imbues her account with a feel for living in an Islamist tyranny-such as the incident of a primary school teacher who requests students to bring in corks for a practical experiment.When the children oblige, it turns out there is no experiment-only a trap; the teacher asked for the corks to find out whose families drink wine, then he launched into a violent diatribe against their miscreant parents for not living by Islamic law.A freethinker from an early age (as a teenager, she decided against prostrating herself during prayers, instead adopting a yoga-style position), Messaoudi does not mince words. She despairs about the descent of Algeria into what she calls "fundamentalist barbarism" and aruges that the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), Algeria's main Islamist organization, has "absolutely all the classic ingredients of totalitarian populist movements." Contrary to most Western analysts of Islam, she discerns an "Islamist International" along the lines of the Communist International. In a particularly powerful analogy, she states "The veil is our yellow star" (even if she does stretch the analogy too far in arguing that the FIS obsession with women is "exactly like" Hitler's obsession with Jews). Were the Islamists to take power, she fears they would "clear the country of all the people who really bother them," which she assumes will be a very large group indeed.Like many Algerians, Messaoudi blames the Islamist rise in large part on the purposeful scheming of the dictatorship that ruled the country from independence in 1962 until the crisis in 1992. She argues that many of its steps, from introducing the Arabic language in schools to not cracking down on FIS, eased the Islamists' path. Messaoudi has her foibles, to be sure, sympathizing with Saddam Husayn and asserting that Washington was "completely responsible" for Scuds falling on Tel Aviv. But she emerges from these pages as a highly attractive intellectual, a heroine made necessary by the horrors of her country's recent history.

Middle East Quarterly, June 1999

A Riveting Account of the Oppression of Women in Algeria.
Written as a dialogue between journalist Elisabeth Schemla and feminist leader Khalida Messaoudi, this book details the heartbreak and the triumphs of being female in a country that has bowed down to the pressures of Islamic Fundamentalism. Messaoudi discusses her life in an intelligent, honest, and passionate manner as she details what it was like to grow up Algerian and female. She also explains the many players and political groups who have tried to control the direction of Algeria over the last thirty years. Most importantly, she brings to life the terrible reality of life in Algeria, where women have been betrayed and stripped of their rights as people by the government under the Family Code and then enslaved, terrorized, and murdered by the misogynistic enemies of that same government. Messaoudi also discusses the ongoing tension between the Berber culture and the Arab cultureof Algeria and its effect on the problems there. This is the first book I have read, in English, that gives such a clear accounting of the political climate of Algeria and of the lives of women there. ... Read more

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The Algerian War 1954-62 was one of the most prolonged and violent examples of decolonization. Bringing to an end 132 years of French rule, the Algerian struggle caused the fall of six French prime ministers, the collapse of the Fourth Republic, and expulsion of one million French settlers. This volume, bringing together leading experts in the field, focuses on one of the key actors in the drama - the French army. They show that the Algerian War was just as much about conflicts of ideas, beliefs and loyalties as it was about simple military operations. In this way, the collection goes beyond polemic and recrimination to explore the many and varied nuances of what was one of the historically most important of the grand style colonial wars.
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Good Read but......
It's been a long time coming, since A Horne's 'A Savage War Of Peace', but this new perspective on the Algerian war of independence 1954-62, while being contemporary in its demystification and breakdown of the ideologies and silence that have controlled the interpretation of this conflict, still left a lot to be desired.
The papers presented by Zervoudakis (From Indochina to Algeria), Shipway (Algeria and the official mind), Evans(The Harkis)and Rollet(Remembering the Algerian war) were excellent.
However the book was the product of a conference held at Salford University in 1996 and in a way this does excuse the intellectual indulgence and Anglo-Saxon perspective contained within many chapters of the book.
I think it would have been a lot more rewarding if the book had contained more commentary on the French military participants (Massu, Bigeard, Trinquier and Jean Pierre), rather than centre on media images, Gillo Pontecorvo's filmatic work 'The Battle Of Algiers' and the fictional character of Colonel Mattheiu. The title of the book, after all, was the the Algerian War And The French Army!
It doesn't beat Larteguy's 'The Centurions' for the nitty-gritty of a very ugly insurgent war and the motivations behind the French military participants, but it's a lot cheaper at $115 dollars and still is a great read.
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Assia Jabar
a very poignant view into the lives of Algerians during the war of independence.very good translation.

Not gripping, but beautiful language
Much of the language in this novel beautiful, but other parts of the book failed to hold my attention.

I appreciated the handy chart of characters at the beginning of the book, showing how they relate to one another. I found that I referenced this often. But shouldn't the text of the novel itself do a sufficient job of explaining the relationships of characters to one another?

I felt as if I was taking a peak into someone else's world, and as quickly as I was invited in, I was cast out again, without any real resolution or deeper understanding.

The most redeeming qualities of this novel were style of the language and the emphasis put on the struggles and burdens on women in Algeria in the mid 1900s.

Early Nationalist-Romantic Work by Great Artist
Assia Djebar's third novel is a transition to a work that served the Algerian nationalist cause but retained her romantic tone. The Afterward by Clarisse Zimra including interview with Djebar is invaluable.

Ruth Roded ... Read more

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What makes people act against their own national identity?
How real are the concepts of nationalism and patriotism?

In what ways does the media control our perception of history in the making?

This ground-breaking work addresses these important questions through an examination of the Algerian war of 1954-62 and the significant French resistance to their own leaders during the bitter conflict. Through the use of extensive interviews, it provides powerful insights into the clash of values that accompanied the war.

In exploring the events and experiences that led a small minority of French people to reject colonialism in the wake of the Algerian conflict, Memories of Resistance focuses on the importance of political allegiances and ideologies, and the motivations for resisting them. The complex issues of identity and shared memory are examined to provide an indispensable analysis of loyalty and self-identity in the wider political context of the world. The book also debates the changing ways in which the media influences perceptions of, and attitudes towards, world events. Third World liberation ideas, personal experiences of French colonialism, memory and the significance of anti-Nazi resistance and political allegiances are all discussed in this wide-ranging and illuminating study.

Memories of Resistance represents a major contribution to the theory and practice of oral history, which is fast becoming one of the most popular and dynamic areas of historical research and will be essential reading for anyone studying French colonial history.
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Using primary source material, this study explores concepts in understanding the Algerian guerrilla campaign. Besides the history of traditional and modern guerrilla warfare in world context, statistical analysis of FLN campaigns derived from French newspaper reports of incidents is also used. ... Read more

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Initially, when the government in Paris responded with force to the November 1, 1954 insurrection of Algerian nationalists, French public opinion offered all but unanimous support. Then it was revealed that hundreds of thousands of Muslims were herded into resettlement camps in Algeria; that Algerianssuspected of nationalist sympathies were imprisoned in France; thatconscientious objectors were denied their rights; and that a resolution to theconflict, either by force or by peaceful methods, was not forthcoming. When itwas proven that the army was guilty of abuses, members of the Protestantminority protested and then laboured to educate their own communities as wellas the public at large to the moral and spiritual perils of these actions.

Based on painstaking research and solid scholarship,The Call of Conscience: French Protestant Responses to the Algeria War,1954-1962 reveals a rich portrait of the protest. ... Read more

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Collective Memory examines contemporary transmission of memories in France of the Algerian war of independence (1954D62). The work emphasizes the lack of transmission of memories of this war through a detailed case study of three crucial vectors of memory: school history, the media, and the family; and argues that lack of transmission of memories is feeding into contemporary racism in France. ... Read more

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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. ... Read more

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The Eloquence of Silence makes a critical departure from more traditional studies of Algerian women--which usually examine female roles in relation to Islam--and instead takes an interdisciplinary look at the subject, arguing that Algerian women's roles are shaped by a variety of structural and symbolic factors. These elements include colonial domination, demographic change, nationalism, socialist development policy of the 1960s and 70s, family formation and the progressive shift to a capitalist economy.

Covering both pre-colonial and colonial eras as well as the independence period, this book focuses on the changes that took place in family structure and law, customs, education, and the war of decolonization as they affected gender relations. Marnia Lazreg approaches the post-colonial era through an examination of how Algeria's model of economic development, structural adjustment policies, and the rise of religious-political opposition affected women's lives. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Berber women in question
This work is flawed: the author presents life before French colonialism as authentically Algerian and doesn't even reference the history of the countryas a product of Islamic/Arab and Ottoman conquest. She has a tendency to overuse phrases such as: 'Algerians thought that...' as if they were homogeneous. Worst of all she refers to Berberism as 'anti-Muslim and anti-Arab' -- twice, without even a variation of phraseology -- and that this phrase is the quite literally the only mention of the Berber people she makes within the whole post-colonial section of the book. For someone who claims to be filling the 'silence' this omission of the concerns of one third of the population is very telling.

However, the sections dealing with post-independence legal changes are informative and useful. ... Read more

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This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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A Long Walk Through the Roman Ruins of Algeria
This is a remarkable travel book/autobiography by Hilaire Belloc, about a solitary walking trip that he took (Belloc almost always travelled on foot, alone)through Algeria in the first decade of the last century.Coveringbetween fifteen and thirty miles a day, Belloc describes the remnants ofthe Roman Empire in the North African mountains and desert.He moves alongthe coast and then into the Atlas mountains, encountering the Bedouinculture flourishing amidst the architectural ruins of the old imperialprovince of Muritania.Although an Englishman and a graduate of BalliolCollege, Oxford, Belloc was not an insular Edwardian; he was dedicated tothe idea of Roman Europe as the continual basis of Western civilization,and his reflections on the haunting ruins of the once great pagan, and thenChristian civilization are fascinating.The ruins, the mountains, the longdaily hikes, meeting native Algerians, drinking Algerian red wine, are allbound together in a beautifully written account that is accompanied in mosteditions by Belloc's drawings. ... Read more