Five books by writers from Algeria, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with The Outsider and Nedjma.
Algeria's best-known writer abroad is Albert Camus, born there and awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. His novel The Outsider is set in colonial Algiers and on its beaches, where settlers and Arabs barely register one another. Much of the best-known modern fiction was written in French, while Arabic and Berber languages are spoken across the country. The French conquest of 1830, the independence war and the violence of the 1990s run through it.
Kateb Yacine's Nedjma, published in 1956, follows four young men obsessed with one woman around Constantine as colonial dispossession bites. Assia Djebar's Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade weaves memoir into the 1830 conquest and the independence war, recovering women's voices and Algerian oral memory. Yasmina Khadra's Morituri sends Detective Llob through corrupt 1990s Algiers as civil war closes in.
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Set in colonial Algiers and its beaches, it captures pied-noir society, heat and the indifference between settlers and Arabs; Camus was born in Algeria.
Landmark 1956 novel of Constantine and the eastern Algerian countryside, tracing four young men's obsession with Nedjma amid colonial dispossession and rising nationalism.
Short stories depicting Algerian women's lives across war, independence and its aftermath, in homes, hammams and city streets.
Blends memoir with the 1830 French conquest and the independence war, recovering women's voices and Algerian oral memory.
Detective Llob investigates corruption in 1990s Algiers as civil war and Islamist violence engulf the city and its security apparatus.
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