Alice Kaplan | The New York Review of Books

Seeing Baya Anew

An exhibition of the Algerian painter’s work liberates it from the political symbolism of late colonialism.

Baya: Femmes en leur jardin [Baya: Women in Their Garden]

an exhibition at the Institut du monde arabe, Paris, November 8, 2022–March 26, 2023; and the Centre de la Vieille Charité, Marseille, May 11–September 24, 2023

May 11, 2023 issue

The Master of Blame

A recently rediscovered work by Louis-Ferdinand Céline has been celebrated as a masterpiece, but does it erase the rabid anti-Semitism of his later writing?

Guerre [War]

by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, edited by Pascal Fouché and with a foreword by François Gibault

Déshonneur et patrie: retour sur l’affaire Céline [Dishonor and Country: A Review of the Céline Affair]

by Philippe Roussin

Peut-on dissocier l’oeuvre de l’auteur? [Can the Work Be Dissociated from the Author?]

by Gisèle Sapiro

July 21, 2022 issue

War and Memory in France and Algeria

Sixty years after the end of the Algerian War of Independence, “painful passions” on both sides continue to impede the reconciliation of the French and Algerian people.

La gangrène et l’oubli: La mémoire de la guerre d’Algérie [Gangrene and Oblivion: Memories of the Algerian War]

by Benjamin Stora

Les clés retrouvées: Une enfance juive à Constantine [Finding the Keys: A Jewish Childhood in Constantine]

by Benjamin Stora

France-Algérie: Les passions douloureuses [France-Algeria: Painful Passions]

by Benjamin Stora

Ali Boumendjel (1919–1957): Une affaire française. Une histoire algérienne [Ali Boumendjel (1919–1957): A French Affair. An Algerian History]

by Malika Rahal

I Was a French Muslim: Memories of an Algerian Freedom Fighter

by Mokhtar Mokhtefi, translated from the French and with an introduction by Elaine Mokhtefi

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November 18, 2021 issue