L'Algérie, c'est beau comme l'Amérique
By: Olivia Burton, Mahi Grand
Edition: Troisìeme édition.
Publisher: Steinkis
Published: 2015
Place of publication: Paris
Language: fre
Number of pages: 171
ISBN-13: 9791090090569
Subjects: Graphic novels; Comic books, strips; History; Description and travel
Description: Black-foot (French-Algerian) granddaughter, Olivia, has always heard of Algeria, though her family has lived in France for years. At university, students speak of the Black-foots as racist and colonialist exploiters, so Olivia finds it hard to make the connection between these descriptions and her grandparents. In the 1990s, when Algeria plunges into a civil war, Olivia wants to know more about her family history. When she asks her grandmother, she receives only a tired smile. However, ten years later, upon her grandmother's death, Olivia finds her grandmother's memoirs of Algeria. She then decides on the spot to go alone to Algeria; wthin her luggage are both questions needing answers and the telephone number for her only contact: Djaffar. Traveling through Algiers and the remote Aures region, she rediscovers the places described by her grandmother, listens to local memories and confronts the experiences of that time with her family's mythology. Discussions with Djaffar shed interesting and partial light on the internal struggles during the Algerian War of Independance, the National Liberation Front (FLN), the colonists, and the black decade. Olivia discovers that there are as many stories as there are participants and witnesses.