I'm currently watching "City on Fire," the AppleTV miniseries based on the 2015 novel by Garth Risk Hallberg, and was immediately reminded of this award winning French novel by Joseph Andras. In both books, it's all about atmosphere... both Algiers and New York have what Louis Menard calls "the assaultive feeling (of) those bombed-out years." Simon Leser's translation shines in this intense, lyrical, raw and philosophical novel.

Joseph Andras’s slim debut novel, winner of the prix Goncourt du Premier Roman (First Novel), is the fictionalization of the story of Fernand Iveton, a pied noir in Algeria in early 1957, during the Algerian War for Independence.

This was so good. A short but powerful fictionalised account of the life and death of real-life pied-noir Fernand Iveton, who during the Algerian War planted a bomb in the factory where he worked, was arrested and although the bomb was found and defused so that no one was hurt, nevertheless was imprisoned, tortured and executed. He was the only European to be executed during the War. A shocking story. I knew something of the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), mainly through Camus, who is inexorably brought to mind when reading this book, but this wonderful piece of fiction filled in a lot of the gaps in my knowledge and sent me scurrying off to find out more. Fernand Iveton comes across as real human being, acting for his beliefs, totally committed to the cause and willing to put himself in danger for it. The brutality of the French colonialist system is portrayed in all its horror. Shameful. Suspenseful, tragic, and desperately sad, this is a small masterpiece.

Fernand is a European living in Algeria in the late 1950's, during the Algerian War. The Algerians are rebelling against France and Fernand is also an anti-colonialist. He joins with some activists and plans to plant a bomb in the factory he works at after hours, so no one will be there and no one will get hurt "just to prove something". The police catch him red-handed, defuse the bomb and arrest him. He is brutally tortured but won't give up his fellow conspirators.

This book is based on a true story and was originally published in French where it received critical acclaim. This gritty tale pulled me in and I learned something new about French and Algerian history. I knew that the French had colonized Algeria, but was not aware of this particular pocket of that history. The story is very well written and thought provoking, raising questions like "is someone who plans to plant a bomb deserving of the death sentence?" You may think you know the answer, but this little, powerful novel will make you think twice.

Thank you Verso Books and NetGalley for this copy. First, I must say that I knew nothing about the subject of the Algerian plea for independence and, most importantly, about Fernand Iveton. The author makes a great job in giving Iveton new life with his words. The poem at the end is just sublime, a beacon of hope when things are bleak and all you have is an ideal, for freedom and for a better future.

What am I reviewing, the reading experience? The author's work? The author's work through the skills of the translator? Is it fair to review based on a reading experience that was tainted by elements that were outside the control of the author and the translator? I'm having issues here.

Let's start with the obvious - this was sublime writing, from start to finish; it was elegantly translated by Simon Leser, whose work I was unfamiliar with until I read this book. The plot deals with the real-life arrest and trial of Fernand Iveton, a supporter of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), for his terrorist activities in 1956. Andras paints a picture of Iveton that appears to mostly be derived from Iveton's supporters and letters written by Iveton himself - a revolutionary that, yes, recognized that violence is sometimes required to gain the needed attention for the cause of Algerian independence, but not at the cost of human lives. Iveton is accused of planting and/or conspiring to plant bombs at a power station, full stop, and the fact that his acts did not lead to the death or injury of any humans should (according to prosecutors and French public sentiment) in no way diminish the fact that his acts were deemed to be terrorism, and that the bombs COULD have led to deaths. This was the primary argument of the prosecution in pursuing a death penalty.

The writing of the dialogue is presented in a manner that's no longer considered experimental, but is still slightly jarring and demands attention on the reader's part. Dialogue begins and ends with no punctuation to indicate it as such, and entire conversations at times are cobbled together into a single paragraph, leaving the reader's ability to grasp the context the only key in determining who is saying what to whom. I describe it in a far more complicated manner than it actually presents itself, but it does take some getting used to. This style adds immensely to what is slightly suggestive of a dream-like state to the story.

Interleaved with the account of Iveton's efforts to plant the explosive devices, interactions with co-conspirators, his arrest, brutal torture, trial, and subsequent events is the story of Iveton's early adulthood and courtship of Hélène, his future wife. This by itself is nothing new, but I point it out because it heightens the sense reading through layers of haze brought about by the manner of presenting the dialogue, as described above.

The story is brilliant. The writing is tremendous. The translation is inspired. The packaging?

Let's be fair - I'm reading from an advanced review copy, which can sometimes also be an uncorrected proof. This one, however, intersperses the original French with the English at times, often in the middle of sentences, only to pick the English up again in mid-sentence (sometimes in mid-word), only to dive back in to the French. Initially I thought this might be an artistic ploy to heighten, I don't know, a sense of detachment from reality, or a forced perspective to jam the reader into the story. But I just invented that - it's obviously an artifact from an editor's copy to compare the French text to the English, and somehow carried over into the review copy. Once I realized it wasn't a publisher's gimmick, I found it incredibly distracting and annoying. At one point, toward the book's climax, a crucial plot point is actually missing in the mishmash of bilingual text. If I read French (spoiler: I don't), it wouldn't have been an issue. The last few pages of the book provided the additional context I needed for it to make sense, but still.

Overall, I tried to divorce my reading experience from the enjoyment of the story overall. I'm certain that Verso Fiction, the well-known and highly respected publishers who kindly granted me the opportunity to read this ahead of publication, will already have been made aware and clean it up before this book goes to press.

It is a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in historical fiction and exceptional translation.

I received an electronic ARC of this book via NetGalley for an honest review.

This rather short book is a novelization of the death--and, by extension, the life--of Fernand Iveton, an Algerian-born communist of French and Spanish ancestry, and the only pied-noir (a person of European descent born in Algeria while it was under French rule) to be executed by the French government for his involvement in the FLN during Algeria's war for independence.

I can't speak to how historically accurate this telling is, because I'm no expert on the topic. It is based on fact. It's a beautifully written and emotionally stirring little book. Despite its brevity, it does a wonderful job characterizing not only Fernand, but the other people around him as well. The narrative moves back and forth through time, but it becomes clear pretty quickly which parts are taking place in the "present" (1956/57), and which are told in flashback.

It isn't exactly a story where anything is or should be a surprise. The description of the book calls it suspenseful, but Fernand Iveton was a real person who was really executed. While the prose is often beautiful, it is not by nature a "pleasant" read--there are extended depictions of torture, and themes of terrorism and official brutality run throughout the narrative. The novel has to deal with these things, given what it is, and it never feels gratuitous.

The ARC I received did have some serious formatting issues, but I trust these will be resolved by final publication.

I think this will be a book that I love but the netgalley arc is so poorly formatted that I can't tell. I've downloaded it twice as a Kindle book, and I get French and the English translation on alternating lines in the text, plus smatterings of Arabic, plus big question marks where my Ipad can't read the intended symbol. When I download the PDF file it's corrupted and unreadable. This is the first time on Netgalley I've literally been unable to make my way through a book because of the formatting. The parts that I can read are intriguing, so 3 stars, perhaps with more to follow, and I'll wait to review on other sites when the actual print book is available to me.

A short book that introduces readers to Fernand Iveton, who was executed during Algerian war. Iventon is caught with a bomb and is taken in, by the French authorities. He is tortured for hours, days and is interrogated. Throughout the book, using various instances and happenstances that surrounds Iventon, we learn the influence of French for over a century and the colonization practices in place. This book puts a perspective on the era's French politics that is engaging with readers' political ideology. In this short book, Joseph Andras manages to weave a story, a humane story about Iventon and the contrived nature of bureaucracy, and colonial powers to control and abuse a country.

<i>Thank you to Netgalley and Verso Books for providing me with a free copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review. </i>

Ideologically charged, moving and powerful; Andras' novel provides a lyrical take on the most raw parts of reality that feels topical and timeless.

This book is almost impossible to classify as it covers so many aspects of so many different genres. The story is interesting and the relationships are sensitively drawn. It does not shy away from challenging or political observations. This is quite a short book considering the breadth of its reach but did not feel lacking in that regard.

This is Joseph Andras' first novel. The book retraces the life of the Communist militant Fernand Iveton, who was the only European executed during the Algerian War because of his commitment and his actions to the National Liberation Front (Algeria).
Joseph Andras was awarded the French Prix Goncourt on May 9, 2016 but before the ceremony he sent a letter to the Académie Goncourt to decline the prize and his endowment. , He declared that competition and rivalry were in his eyes notions foreign to writing and creation.
From the perspective of decades in the future, the narrative is painfully familiar in its depiction of man vs bureaucracy. The characters are vividly human, not caricatures. The action moves around in time but has a strong plot spine. Highly recommended If the subject piques your interest.

Lest we forget........

In my case it was not a case of forgetting but a great lacuna of not knowing. I've never heard of Fernand Iveton and his affair. I never put the jigsaw puzzle together. Oh I knew that Algeria's release from the French colonial yoke was violent but that was it, no more details. Nothing else we grew up being taught, no other 'pieces' in our daily news fodder. So this sentence from Mr Andras drove the point home:

"Well, so: the day France celebrated victory over the Germans, I don't know how many Muslims, thousands, more, were being massacred in the country, at Setif, at Guelma."

So thank you Mr Andras for bringing this to my attention, for giving me other pieces of the puzzle of our current situation. We live together across this blue sea and I for one do not know what it really means when a French President shakes the hand of his Algerian counterpart, I do not know about the blood split and covered.

Andras gives us his fictionalised account of the life of the Communist militant Fernand Iveton, who was the only European executed during the Algerian War because of his commitment and his actions to the National Liberation Front (Algeria).

Andras writes with immediacy, his alternating of what Fernand does and what happens to him to Fernand's story with Helene gives different perspective to the whole story. Fernand becomes a person. Even the paragraphs in French, Arabic, English, although confusing to me, created a sense of 'overwhelming' by what is happening which was appropriate at that time in the story.

Seeing a picture of Fernand and Helene I thought of how easy it is to loose our facade, our labels, and become something else. In this photo Fernand and Helene look nicely put together, just like my father and mother in their photos of that time period. But Fernand was made known to the public not with these photos but with photos taken after his arrest and torture, so stripped of any kind of dignity whatsoever. So then very easy to label differently, 'dirty', 'unkept', 'terrorist'. Narrative is controlled by the ones who have access to showers and good clothing.

An ARC gently given by author/publisher through Netgalley in return for a review.