However, not even the gunmen of the OAS could...

Like the autobiographical hero of this, his classic first novel, Mouloud Feraoun grew up in the rugged Kabyle region of French-controlled Algeria, where the prospects for most Muslim Berber men were limited to shepherding or emigrating to France for factory work. While Feraoun escaped such a fate by excelling in the colonial school system--as a student and, later, as a teacher at the Ecole Normale--he remained firmly rooted in Kabyle culture. This dual perspective only enhanced his view, often brutally, of the ravages on his country by poverty, colonial rule, and a world war that descended...

In Land and Blood, his second novel, the Algerian-Kabyle writer Mouloud Feraoun offers a detailed portrait of life for Algerian Kabyles in the 1920s and 1930s through the story of a Kabyle-Berber man, Amer. Like many Kabyle men of the 1930s, Amer leaves his village to work in the coal mines of France. While in France, he inadvertently kills his own uncle in an accident that sets in motion forces of betrayal and revenge once he returns home.

Unlike The Poor Man's Son, his first fictional work, Land and Blood is not autobiographical but is rather the first in a...

In Land and Blood, his second novel, the Algerian-Kabyle writer Mouloud Feraoun offers a detailed portrait of life for Algerian Kabyles in the 1920s and 1930s through the story of a Kabyle-Berber man, Amer. Like many Kabyle men of the 1930s, Amer leaves his village to work in the coal mines of France. While in France, he inadvertently kills his own uncle in an accident that sets in motion forces of betrayal and revenge once he returns home.

Unlike The Poor Man's Son, his first fictional work, Land and Blood is not autobiographical but is rather the first in a...