F. Laroui

Comparative energy and environmental policy for the residential sector: applying Dutch standards to the UK housing stock

We analysed the effect of applying Dutch thermal efficiency standards of residential dwellings, conversion efficiency, appliance fuel mixes and appliance ownership rates, to the UK residential sector. We found that although aggregate energy consumption does not change significantly, pollution emissions are reduced significantly. Thus, the primary difference between housing and appliance stocks in the two regions is in terms of fuel mixes. However, improved thermal efficiency does allow for increased dwelling warmth without increasing emissions. Adapting Dutch standards in the UK would lead to a one-time improvement of the environmental situation, after which the trend is continued.

Cave Culture in Maghrebi Literature. Imagining Self and Nation

As the author herself writes, ‘caves are [ . . . ] universally recognized as signifying the beginnings of humankind’ (2). They can also be viewed as a return to the womb—an obvious image—the refuge par excellence. And then there is, of course, Plato’s use of the cave—probably the most famous one—to make a philosophic point about the human condition, about the inaccessible ‘reality’ outside of the cave and the poor, distorted images we can see, the shadows cast from the fire on the wall. Are there other ways of using the cave as metaphor? Christa Jones makes a convincing case for a specific usage shared by writers from the Maghreb: the (literary) cave is a metaphor for national identity, for the homeland, the patrie. After all, the young Nedjma (who gives her name to the title of Kateb Yacine’s novel, one of the most important in Maghrebi literature) was conceived in a cave—and she does represent the elusive, contradictory, difficult (impossible?) construction of the Algerian nation after the war of liberation. The cave figures explicitly in the title of Yamina Méchakra’s La Grotte éclatée and Georges Buis’s La Grotte etc. Starting from this premise, the author goes one step further to assert that the cave represents ‘an unbridgeable [ . . . ] opposition between the Occident and the Orient’. This is more difficult to prove but she does provide a vast array of arguments taken from different sources, all related to North African (Maghrebi) postcolonial literature and film: Kabylian folktales (which she could have extended to Maghrebi folktales), war novels (with a special emphasis on the role of women), films (e.g. Moumen Smihi’s Chergui), Tahar Ben Jelloun’s well-known novels and many lesser known texts of sometime obscure writers etc. All in all, the case is effectively made. Perhaps inevitably in a book of such scope, some arguments have no discernable bearing on the central thesis, and one wonders whether some of them could have been skipped. For instance, discussing the differences between Paul Bowle’s translation of Choukri’s first novel (For Bread Alone), the French version provided by Tahar Ben Jelloun under the title Le Pain nu and Choukri’s own characterisation of his book as fiction (131) is indeed a very interesting aside but it has little to do with the central theme. On the other hand, if everything was worth investigating, then a more critical assessment of Driss Chraibi’s fantastic (i.e. false) account of his own life (135) would have been welcome. But these are details. Christa Jones has written a rich, original and inspiring book.