Algerian Chronicles

It was the last book Camus published in his lifetime, and it appears now in its entirety for the first time in English, expertly translated by Arthur Goldhammer. The editor, Alice Kaplan, has added six texts to Camus's original selection in an appendix, to further illuminate Camus's relation to Algeria... As the writings in "Algerian Chronicles"

make clear, Camus's position in 'no man's land' left him increasingly isolated: hated

by the right for his condemnation of government policies, scorned by the left for his inability to imagine an independent Algeria from which the French would be absent...As Kaplan points out, we cannot know how he would have reacted to the final years of the war, or to the independence that followed. We do know that his ethical positions are

still meaningful, worldwide.--Susan Rubin Suleiman"New York Times Book Review" (05/12/2013)

Algerian Chronicles"...comprises everything Camus wrote on Algeria...Camus's writing on Kabylia is a marvel of eloquence. His sympathy for the people, his critique of the colonial regime, his pain over the injustices that he witnesses--all thrilling. Seventy years after he wrote these pieces the reader is still penetrated by their literary beauty. But at no time in Algerian Chronicles" are we listening to the speaking voice of a revolutionary. It is the voice of a despairing citizen who does not want his country's government overthrown; he wants it to do better by its people. He wants France to remain in Algeria, but to honor its own founding myths of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The pieces in Algerian Chronicles" that were written years later in France, during the war for independence, are repetitive pleas for each side to stop demonizing the other, for human decency to prevail.
--Vivian Gornick"Boston Review" (07/01/2013)
Read today, the articles brim with [Camus's] trademark Mediterranean passion, the sensibility that lent all his literary works their moral and lyrical depth...Prove[s] indispensable to a fuller understanding of the intellectual history of 20th-century Europe.
--Arlice Davenport"Wichita Eagle" (07/29/2013)
Among the French writers, not too many people in those days, back in the 1930s, appeared to care one way or another about Algeria and its poverty. You could read about the erotic and exotic dream-life of Andre Gide, but not about injustice. Camus was a pioneer.
--Paul Berman"New Republic" (08/19/2013)"
Algerian Chronicles."..comprises everything Camus wrote on Algeria...Camus's writing on Kabylia is a marvel of eloquence. His sympathy for the people, his critique of the colonial regime, his pain over the injustices that he witnesses--all thrilling. Seventy years after he wrote these pieces the reader is still penetrated by their literary beauty. But at no time in Algerian Chronicles" are we listening to the speaking voice of a revolutionary. It is the voice of a despairing citizen who does not want his country's government overthrown; he wants it to do better by its people. He wants France to remain in Algeria, but to honor its own founding myths of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The pieces in Algerian Chronicles" that were written years later in France, during the war for independence, are repetitive pleas for each side to stop demonizing the other, for human decency to prevail.
--Vivian Gornick"Boston Review" (07/01/2013)