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Not as interesting as I'd hoped. It felt disjointed. Maybe the translation?
But I dud learn about the French colonialism in Algiers.

I wanted to love this. It‘s literary and occasionally whimsical and tells important stories of Algeria under French rule. Unfortunately it‘s also just a little too thin and the split timelines mean not enough detail for any of the tales to really be fleshed out. #readingafrica2022

Had the contents matched the promise of the cover, I'd have loved this book, as it was I found it rather flat. There's so much literary history which could have been delved into that Adimi's choice of a present-day MC who is utterly uninterested in books & the literary world is an odd one. The parts on the brutal repression of Algeria by the French colonial forces were informative & rightly part of the story but where was the exploration of the 👇

#ReadingAfrica2022 #Algeria 🇩🇿
I've lost count of how many books I've read for the challenge: I'll tot them up at the end of the year.
Anyhoo, this is technically the second book I've read by an Algerian writer, though as the first was Apuleius, a citizen of the Roman Empire, an author who was born in the present-day country seems justifiable.
This one is a fictionalised history of the bookshop established by Edmond Charlot in Algiers, 1936.

....the store stayed open, thanks to Manon and our friends. It's clearer than ever to me that without friendship there could be no Éditions Charlot. It all depends, essentially, on circumstances, friendships, and encounters.

April 1, 1942

The war has thrown everything into chaos. I can't get any more paper or ink.

.... in the middle of the night German soldiers are being parachuted into remote Algerian villages. They bring canned food and chocolates for the children. They have come to convince us to join Hitler's army....
Years later, we will discover machine guns and German helmets in those villages. Our grandparents will shrug their shoulders: "A young German soldier came down in a parachute ... He brought us food, so we hid him."

Without a doubt the cover and title drew me to this book. I didn't love it but it was interesting. I did think it was nonfiction at first. It is about the real life person called Edmond Charlot, who opened a bookshop in Algiers. All that it entailed, the good and the bad. Plus it tells of another young man Ryad, who has to empty the shop in 2017. It goes back and forth. Plus you learn a bit about Algeria's policital history

Box two of my #YearOfReading2020 came today from Shakespeare and Co.
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