The Lovers of Algeria: A Novel (Lannan Translation Selection (Graywolf Paperback)) [Paperback]

Anouar Benmalek (Author), Joanna Kilmartin (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Lannan Translation Selection (Graywolf Paperback) | Publication Date: August 1, 2004

A breathless story of love and survival in war-torn Algeria-past and present
The 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

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This captivating novel set in late 20th-century Algeria entwines the country's tumultuous politics with the personal histories of two lovers who found and lost each other amid the upheaval. Forty years after her twin children were killed by the FLN (Algerian Liberation Front), 65-year-old Anna leaves Switzerland for Algiers in search of her children's graves and her Arab first husband, Nassreddine. Attempting to disguise her European identity in a land rife with racism and terrorism, she dons traditional Arab dress and enlists the help of nine-year-old Jallal, a precocious, destitute street peddler. The unlikely couple ventures off into the mountains, but Nassreddine is living in Algiers, "the dirty, cruel capital which, in lieu of family, he has learned to love so dearly." Benmalek uses Anna's search for her husband, a spiritual pilgrimage in its own right, as a way of reaching into the past: he shows Anna as a disillusioned circus acrobat; Nassreddine imprisoned, interrogated, tortured and wrongly accused of everything from resistance fighting to cannibalism. Despite the violence, corruption and discord, however, Benmalek never denies Algiers its beauty—"magnificent beneath its blazing sun." Vivid language and striking metaphors bring the landscape to life, and temporal shifts establish a punishing distance between the characters as they search for one another. This book was a bestseller in France, where it was awarded the Prix Rahid. With a poetic but light-handed translation by Joanna Kilmartin, a more modest but admiring reception here should be expected.
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About the Author

Anouar Benmalek was born in Casablanca in 1956 and now lives in France. After the 1988 riots in Algeria in protest of government policies, he became one of the founders of the Algerian Committee Against Torture.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press (August 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155597404X
• ISBN-13: 978-1555974046
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,175,215 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "The devil has entered...his hoofprints are everywhere.", August 30, 2004

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Lovers of Algeria: A Novel (Lannan Translation Selection (Graywolf Paperback)) (Paperback)

Opening in 1955, when the French are battling insurgents for control of Algeria, Anna, a Swiss resident and former circus performer, and Nassreddine, a Berber from the mountains of Algeria, travel by bus from a remote mountain village to Algiers to formalize their marriage. As the bus makes its way through the countryside, it is stopped by French soldiers, and Nassreddine is arrested, taken to jail, and tortured unmercifully. Anna is forced to go on to the village without him, but when Nassreddine finally escapes and makes his way back, he finds his mother's house empty.

Alternating back and forth in time, author Benmalek traces the lives of Anna and Nassreddine and their parents, separately and together, for seventy years, in the process giving the political and social history of Algeria. Whether under the rule of the French in the 1950s or the Algerian Liberation Front (FLN), which defeated them, ordinary citizens live lives fraught with danger. Armed Islamic fundamentalists, which fought both the French and the Liberation Front for control of the population in the 1950s, have, by 1997 become a major force. Torture, murders, mutilations, and executions, for which the French were condemned, have continued into the 1990s.

Into this atmosphere of civil war in 1996, Anna, now in her sixties, returns to Algiers from Switzerland in search of Nassreddine. Hiring Jallal, a nine-year-old orphan who sells peanuts and individual cigarettes to act as a translator, and wearing a traditional haik, she is determined to make her way back to Nassreddine's home village, the place they had always agreed to use as their common contact point. Anna's story alternates with that of Nassreddine and moves back and forth in time as both try to reach the village.

This story of a great love that crosses boundaries is not for the faint of heart. As the lives of Anna and Nassreddine, Jallal (the boy-translator), their parents, and their friends come to life, the reader is exposed to unimaginable horrors. Though the novel is melodramatic, it is not melodrama for the sake of false emotion. Life in Algeria is tenuous at best, survival seems almost accidental, and everyone is a pawn of someone else. The ending will not satisfy all readers, but it is consistent with the demonstrated fragility of life throughout the novel. Dramatic, horrifying, sensuously descriptive, but offering no promises of a glorious future, the novel is a grim reminder that when governments do not protect individuals, love and understanding are all that is left to give meaning to life. Mary Whipple

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Moving and beautiful, October 23, 2004

By 

Sankhya (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lovers of Algeria: A Novel (Lannan Translation Selection (Graywolf Paperback)) (Paperback)

The author is a wonderful writer: the story is taut, the characters have depth, the description of a besieged country mixed with a beautiful love story is fairly riveting. However, the ending was like walking up to a door and not being able to open it. I don't need tidy or happy endings, but this story could have done with a little resolution.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended, December 30, 2007

By 

William Cuthbertson - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Lovers of Algeria: A Novel (Lannan Translation Selection (Graywolf Paperback)) (Paperback)

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, a Swiss gaouria, and Arab Nassreddine have an unconventional love affair that begins when they are young adults and continues, or tries to continue, amid four decades of war between European, Algerian, and religious interests. The scenes of conflict are intensely graphic, but Benmalek's skill as an author is equally as true in crafting scenes of memorable, albeit sad beauty for his cautious but passionate pair; these are the scenes that may -- and I am not sure they do -- transcend two lives brimmed with disappointment. Love, we hope, can outlast everything, but the scars of destruction this story undresses for us do not fade from memory so easily.