Phillip C. Naylor

James McDougall on the history of modern Algeria: a book review essay

At the end of her pilgrimage ‘home’ and with great relief, Naïma accepts that she has no desire to return to Algeria, that for her ‘chez soi’ is unquestionably France. Zeniter offers this difficult yet realistic admission to second-generation immigrants, and more specifically to the children and grandchildren of harkis, as a way of reconciling past and present and of refusing the teleological narrative that French and Algerian history has imposed on harki identity.

Perilous desert: insecurity in the Sahara

Timothy Cleaveland, Christopher Harrison and James Searing, dating from the 1990s and early 2000s. However dated, the fieldwork is exemplary. Cleaveland’s history of Walata, based on field research in 1990 and 1991, was groundbreaking. Given the evolutions in Mauritanian society that the editor herself alludes to – the growing political self-confidence of the Haratine community, political regression under Abdel Aziz and security threats – it is all the more regrettable that there is no analysis of Mauritania following the 2008 coup. In sum, Le passé colonial et les héritages actuels en Mauritanie offers glimpses of newer historiography and social anthropology appearing from emerging Mauritanian scholars, together with a compendium of French translations of classic works by Mauritania scholars over the past two decades. Its objectives are laudable. Mauritania’s contemporary challenges connect its colonial past to its patrimonial present: the consciousness of the Haratine, the neo-colonial nexus of patronage and national natural resources, the construction of pluralistic national identities, and with this the reconciliation of Mauritania’s numerous cleavages. One cannot but hope that further works will follow in its objectives with fresh research and reflection.

Introduction to ‘Paul Bowles and Morocco’s music’

For over 50 years, Paul Bowles (1910–99) lived in Tangier, Morocco, a transactive space of mingling and melding cultures and civilizations. He is most renowned for his literary works – novels, short stories, and translations, which often explored existential themes. Bowles bridged the ‘Lost Generation’ (Gertrude Stein) with the Beats (William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac) and beyond. On the other hand, Bowles’s musical career as a composer and critic has received relatively incidental attention. To Bowles, sounds were as important as stories. In a letter written in December 1947 to his close friend, composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Bowles expounded: