Boualem Sansal – författare

Rachel and Malrich are the sons of a German father and an Algerian mother. Born in a small village in the Algerian hinterland, they are sent to Paris to be educated. Rachel excels under the French education system to become a successful businessman working for a multinational, but Malrich, 15 years younger, grows up in the banlieue, drops out of school and mixes with the wrong crowd. The brothers keep a wary distance from each other until the day their parents are killed in an Islamic fundamentalist raid.When their father''s personal effects reach Paris, Rachel discovers that Hans Schiller was a reputed chemist before the war, who joined the Nazi party and then the Waffen SS. Posted to Auschwitz, he played an active part in the extermination of thousands of people. At the end of the war, he escaped to Egypt. There Nasser lent him to the burgeoning Algerian FLN, and after Independence, he settled in Ain Deb, where he started a family, enjoying the respect given to the mujahideen...Rachel feels compelled to re-examine his heritage and so begins a journey full of foreboding back to Algeria, then on to Germany to trace his father''s past and to attempt to come to terms with the Shoah, one of the great taboos of Muslim culture. The attempt proves more than Rachel can bear, and it is left to the streetwise Malrich to take up the trail and complete his brother''s unfinished business.

____________________''This is a remarkable novel ... and a remarkably brave one. It is compelling and gripping. The horrors of man''s inhumanity to man are presented unblinkingly'' - Scotsman''Demotic clichés, literary illusions and lyrical descriptions, translated from the French with verve by Frank Wynne.'' - Spectator''A searing account of evil, guilt and shame'' - Financial Times____________________In a crumbling colonial mansion besieged by slums in the old quarter of Algiers, Lamia lives a life of self-imposed isolation, communing only with her ghosts by day, working as a paediatrician by day. Her family are dead, but for her beloved brother Sofiane, who has become a harraga – one of those who risk their lives attempting to flee the country for a better life in Europe or elsewhere.Lamia''s tranquil, ordered existence is turned upside-down when a sixteen-year-old stranger knocks on her door in the middle of the night. Only because she has been sent by Sofiane, Lamia takes the girl in. Pregnant, unmarried and dressed in garish finery like an X-Factor contestant, Chérifa is talkative, curiously innocent, and utterly unafraid. She enters the house like a whirlwind, and leaves a trail of destruction in her wake. Lamia must try to teach her, to protect her against a world where a woman who is not meek, subservient, married is an affront, where a girl who is pregnant can be killed to spare her family''s honour.By turns funny and lyrical, luminous and sardonic, Harraga, by the controversial author of An Unfinished Business, is the engaging and ultimately tragic story of two very different women who become friends and allies in a patriarchal world.

Qui mieux que Boris Cyrulnik et Boualem Sansal aurait pu écrire ce livre à deux voix, où l’histoire de l’Algérie est dépeinte comme une de ces entreprises humaines qu’on ne comprend qu’en mesurant le rôle structurel de la violence dans les sociétés ? Loin des discours officiels, parfois sans ménagement, ils invitent à redécouvrir l’Algérie et les Algériens, la manière dont ils ont mené ou subi leur histoire, fabriqué leurs héros, conquis leur indépendance – pour le meilleur et pour le pire, entre terrorisme et résistance, fanatisme et corruption, violence et soumission. Un livre nécessaire pour sortir des mensonges et des hypocrisies, et penser à bras-le-corps une situation complexe, pour les Algériens comme pour les Français. Et imaginer peut-être, une fois éclaircis les vieux différends, d’oublier l’amertume et les ressentiments pour rendre possible une amitié entre peuples capables de se reconnaître pour ce qu’ils sont, ayant cessé de se leurrer sur le passé. Un livre salutaire. Boris Cyrulnik est neuropsychiatre. Il est l’auteur de nombreux ouvrages qui ont tous été d’immenses succès, dont, parmi les plus récents, Psychothérapie de Dieu et La nuit, j’écrirai des soleils. Boualem Sansal est un écrivain et essayiste algérien né en 1949. Il a reçu de nombreux prix littéraires dont le Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française. Il vit près d’Alger.

Rachel and Malrich are the sons of a German father and an Algerian mother. Born in a small village in the Algerian hinterland, they are sent to Paris to be educated. Rachel excels under the French education system to become a successful businessman working for a multinational, but Malrich, 15 years younger, grows up in the banlieue, drops out of school and mixes with the wrong crowd. The brothers keep a wary distance from each other until the day their parents are killed in an Islamic fundamentalist raid.When their father's personal effects reach Paris, Rachel discovers that Hans Schiller was a reputed chemist before the war, who joined the Nazi party and then the Waffen SS. Posted to Auschwitz, he played an active part in the extermination of thousands of people. At the end of the war, he escaped to Egypt. There Nasser lent him to the burgeoning Algerian FLN, and after Independence, he settled in Ain Deb, where he started a family, enjoying the respect given to the mujahideen...Rachel feels compelled to re-examine his heritage and so begins a journey full of foreboding back to Algeria, then on to Germany to trace his father's past and to attempt to come to terms with the Shoah, one of the great taboos of Muslim culture. The attempt proves more than Rachel can bear, and it is left to the streetwise Malrich to take up the trail and complete his brother's unfinished business.