Les Francais d'Algerie cinquante ans apres : l'histoire a l'epreuve de la fiction

Abstract

Algerian independence in 1962 sparked in that country a mass exodus of Biblical proportions of French Europeans. This paper purports to survey how Pieds-Noirs fare in French fiction literature today, that is a half century after these dramatic events. Despite Evelyne Sellés-Fischer’s lament that children of Pieds-Noirs eschew any interest about the life their families led in French North Africa, in fiction literature the situation is totally different. French readers are spoilt for choice between sagas of Pieds-Noirs families, political novels, romans à these, memory novels, memoirs about the return to the land of birth and mention must be made of the plethora of autobiographical works by Pieds-Noirs. Perhaps the most remarkable of Pieds-Noirs authors of Maltese lineage is Pierre Dimech born in Algiers. The writings of Dimech bear witness to the resilience of an author who turned the trauma of 1962 into a blessing after his discovery of the land of birth of his ancestors, that is the Maltese islands.