From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In this candid, powerfully wrought memoir, Pulitzer Prize–winner Morgan (
Churchill;
Maugham;
Reds) recalls his service as a young officer in France's bitter war in Algeria. A native of France, Morgan was working as a journalist in the United States in the mid-1950s when he received his conscription notice. Following a brief posting to a regiment in the Algerian countryside, he was transferred to Algiers, arriving just in time for the Battle of Algiers, which featured history's first "systematic use of urban terrorism." Placing crude bombs at bus stops, cafes and soccer stadiums, the rebels hoped to "create a climate of insecurity" among the French and to invite reprisals that would turn "moderate Arabs into rebels." The French responded by using torture to extract intelligence. "Torture produced immediate results," Morgan notes, and the French slowly dismantled the urban terrorist cells. By the end of 1957, France had won the battle, but it would lose the war. The country's tactics sparked an antiwar movement in France, and the war continued to rage in the Algerian countryside until the French conceded defeat in 1962. Morgan recalls this fierce history with an intensity that belies that it happened a half century ago. Anyone interested in the origins of modern terrorist tactics will benefit from his recollections.
(Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--Ce texte provient de la
Hardcover
édition.
From Booklist
American forces training for counterinsurgency fighting have recently been shown the classic film
Battle of Algiers, since many would-be revolutionaries regard it as a model for urban warfare against an "occupying" army. Morgan was educated in the U.S., and at the age of 23 he was yanked from his job as a journalist at a small American newspaper and conscripted into the French army. After basic training and officers-training school, he was sent to the backcountry to fight the growing rebel movement. As the rebels shifted their focus from the country to the cities, Morgan was assigned to write for an official newspaper, which gave him a bird's-eye view of the day-to-day struggle in Algiers. Although Morgan provides a concise overview of precolonial and colonial Algerian history, this is not a comprehensive account of the war. Rather, it is a gripping, often-shocking chronicle of his own experiences. Morgan describes the atrocities committed by both sides. He became an ardent opponent of the war, but his account takes no sides.
Jay FreemanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--Ce texte provient de la
Hardcover
édition.
