Novel
Les Bandits de l'Atlas
Not translated into English
Azzedine Bounemeur · 1983
Synopsis
On the edge of the Atlas, under the régime of the mixed communes and the hand of the caïds, peasants have no choice but to starve in the bad years or to go outside the law. Hassan sees his father killed by the caïd's men. He knows the blackest poverty, then joins the band of Boucetta, which holds the mountain, in the hope of taking revenge. The caïd, his men and the gendarmes are waiting for them at the edge of the forest where they mean to hide.
Context
Gallimard published it on 14 March 1983 in the Blanche series. It is the first volume of a cycle of five books built on the same material, the mountains of the author's native country and the colonial war seen from below; its author never chose a subject later than 1962, and Algerian critics read him as a witness rather than as an inventor of stories. The Paris house judged certain passages of the fourth volume too cruel and turned it down: the rest of the cycle appeared with a more modest publisher. The narrative advances by brief, dry scenes, at ground level among the mechtas and the paths, without ever explaining to the reader what the colonial administration expects of him.
Who it is for
Short, in French, easy to read but hard going: famine, beatings and reprisals follow one another without mercy. It is worth knowing that nothing in it is told except through what a peasant sees of it.
Prizes and reception
The manuscript received the first prize of the twentieth anniversary of independence in Algiers in 1982. It revealed a novelist who has remained almost completely discreet since.