The Barbary figs / Rashid Boudjedra ; translated and with an afterword by André Naffis-Sahely.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Two old friends find themselves side by side on the flight from Algiers to Constantine. Though bound by shared experiences from their youth, they have lived very different lives. The flight will last an hour, during which both their stories will be told, peppered by anecdotes about Algeria's struggle to release itself from the French colonial grip.

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Publishers Weekly Review

Partly the retelling of the last half-century of Algerian history-the war against France, the rise of the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN), and the suppression by the FLN of rival political parties- Boudjedra's latest, winner of the 2010 Arab Book Prize is also the "partly autobiographical" story of two cousins, Omar and Rashid, sharing a present day flight from Algiers to Constantine. During this hour-long commute, the cousins recollect the "terrible maelstrom" of Algerian history and their own "complex, muddled, almost amorous relationship," from their shared boyhood in Constantine, to becoming resistance fighters in the Fellagha, to grown men disenchanted by the FLN's "struggle for power and lust for money." As Rashid reflects about his upbringing in pre-war Constantine, Omar tries to "attain a certain level of clarity" about his father, the Police Commissioner of French-ruled Batna, and the disappearance years ago of his younger brother Salim, an agent of the Organisation de l'armee secrete (OAS). Attempting to cull history's "opposing versions of the truth," Boudjedra (The Repudiation) produces a spell-binding narrative that is well aware of the "propensity of history to juxtapose subjectivity with the objectivity of real life." (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.