Rêves de Gloire (Dreams of Glory)

 "On the 17th October 1960 at 11.45 am, the Presidential Citroen DS came under attack from heavy machine gun fire from a lorry at la Croix de Berny. The general passed away a few moments later pronouncing these last words, "We should have gone through Petit-Clamart. What utter chaos..."

De Gaulle dead, no putsch from the generals, no OAS, no Evian agreements, no referendum, and an Algerian war that has been settled by the dividing up of the country: Algiers and Oran remain French.

Now, in Algiers, a record collector's obsession with finding a rare item from the sixties leads him to lift the veil surrounding the mysteries of this war and its aftermath...

There are winds blowing through this novel of a history that is not our own, but which could have been. Overflowing with committed orality, its structure (or lack of structure?) echoes Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner or Manhattan Transfer by John E. Stith. And of course the shadow of Albert Camus is ever present.