On the whole, to the English speaking world, there is only one name associated with fiction from Algeria and that is Albert Camus. While Camus justly deserves his own reknown there are several points to be made. Firstly there are a number of writers who write in French but who can call themselves Algerian in a different sense from Camus. That sense derives from the colonial history of the country. The French colonised it and for many years regarded it as a part of France. The ‘natives’ came in time to write fiction in French, Dib (also reviewed here) is a good example of such an author. During the colonial period, however, an ‘Algerian’ writer was an ambiguous figure. The settlers with whom the French populated Algeria came from a diverse range of backgrounds and were drawn from all over the northern shores of the Mediterranean. It was this group of immigrants who came to make up the the population called ‘pied noir’ (‘black foot’) a term with different suggested origins, from black footwear to Blackfeet Indians.


Camus himself, born of a Spanish mother, was part of this group. Although he achieved fame as a French writer, it was the North African background to much of his work that added to its particularity. He was not, however, the only sympathetic chronicler of the Algerian situation to arise from the ranks of the pied noirs. There was also Emmanuel Roblès.


Roblès is a novelist of great ability, adept at getting to the heart of his protaganists and developing enthralling stories. While much of his work takes Algeria as its background, he is not afraid to situate his fictions in entirely different contexts. Knives is just such a work. Translated into English in 1958, it is set in the province of Tabasco in the turbulent period of Mexican history corresponding with the inter-war years in Europe. Tabasco was in the grip of a charismatic demagogue, Garrido, who attempted to snuff out the Catholic Church and introduce a new form of radicalism based on a belief in rationalism and a ban on alcohol. This was also the background to Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, but Roblès’ hero, Pierre Mayen, is no cleric on the run. He has long given up believing in anything very much.


Disabused of humanity by his experiences of World War I, Pierre Mayen keeps himself alive by selling sewing machines and drinking any illicit spirits he can lay his hands upon. The only force that drives him is his love for a local widow, Elena. But the situation is hopeless and in a malarial haze he commits the murder which he feels she would applaud; killing the intellectual figure behind the new regime. Through a misunderstanding, he confesses his crime to the police and his last hours are spent awaiting execution. In Mayen, Roblès has created a figure as tragic as Lowry’s Geoffrey Firmin and as equally lost in the maelstrom of the Mexico of that time.

‘An hour later Mayen began to feel sick. Shivering all over, he left the office and went into a cantina where he knew they sold spirits on the sly. At that time of the morning the place was empty. A cloud of flies flew up as he approached the bar. A fat, thick-lipped woman came up and asked him curtly what he wanted.

«Tequila,» said Mayen confidentially, as though walls had ears.

A river steamer blew its siren. The woman hesitated then disappeared behind the screen, returning a moment later with a glass.

«Be quick,» she said, putting it down in front of him.

As soon as he had the glass in his hands he felt better and at the same time more at ease with himself. He tossed off the liquor under the women’s black gaze, and said laconically:

«Same again.»’ p51