Red All Saints' Day: Remembering the start of the Algerian War, 70 years ago

Issued on: 01/11/2024 - 

From the show

On November 1, 1954, when Algeria was still under French colonial rule, members of the pro-independence FLN carried out a series of attacks across the country. This date has come to be known as the beginning of the Algerian War. In France at the time, there was no talk of war; only attacks attributed to agitators and bandits. But in reality, it was the start of a long conflict that would lead to Algeria's independence in 1962. On the coattails of losing colonial Indochina, France never imagined that Algeria, home to nearly a million Europeans, had begun its march towards independence. A new chapter of this history has been opened as French authorities just recognized the execution of Larbi Ben M'hidi, one of the leaders of the FLN, 67 years after his death. FRANCE 24's Karim Yahiaoui, Nessrine Benzebbouchi and Lauren Bain take a look back at this pivotal date in Algerian and colonial history.

Macron recognises Algerian national hero Larbi Ben M'hidi 'killed by French soldiers' in 1957

Prix Goncourt: Kamel Daoud wins France's literary prize for Algerian Civil War novel ‘Houris’


French-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud has won the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize, for his novel set during the bloody "Black Decade" that tore apart his native Algeria at the end of the 20th century.

Issued on: 04/11/2024 - 
By: NEWS WIRES

Algerian writer Kamel Daoud poses during a photo session at literature festival "Les Correspondances" in Manosque, southern France, on September 25, 2024. © Joël Saget, AFP


French-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud on Monday won France's top literary prize, the Goncourt, for a novel centred on Algeria's civil war between the government and Islamists in the 1990s, organisers said.

The jury needed just one round of voting to award the coveted prize to Algeria-based Daoud for his novel "Houris" about what has become known as Algeria's "black decade".

Daoud's was already known internationally for his 2013 debut novel "The Meursault Investigation" -- a retelling of Albert Camus' "The Stranger" from the opposite angle -- for which he won the First Novel category of the Goncourt prize.

The writer, who has also worked as a journalist and columnist, has stirred controversy with his analyses of society in Algeria and elsewhere in the Arab world.

In 2016 -- following a mass sexual assault on women by Arab migrants in Cologne, Germany -- he wrote an op-ed piece published in the New York Times called "The Sexual Misery of the Arab World".

The prestigious Goncourt prize usually sparks book sales in the hundreds of thousands for the winning author.

Daoud's main rival for this year's edition was Gael Faye, a Rwandan-born writer, composer and rapper, whose novel "Jacaranda" deals with the rebuilding of Rwanda after the 1994 genocide.

While losing out on the Goncourt, Faye was Monday handed the Renaudot, another coveted prize awarded during the French literary competition season.

(AFP)