For years, writing about Algeria, or even acknowledging France’s violent past there, was a lonely endeavor.
The novelist Gérard-Martial Princeau, who publishes under the pen name Mathieu Belezi, wrote about the early colonial years in virtual anonymity for fifteen years. Those novels found only a few thousand readers—the result, Belezi long believed, of a deep-seated unease about a past that tested France’s image as a beacon of human rights. But the history of that period compelled him.
His luck changed with his fourth novel, “Attaquer la terre et le soleil,” or “Attacking the Earth and the Sun,” which tells of the brutal 19th-century French colonization of Algeria and was published last year. Its popularity – the book has won prestigious awards and has sold nearly 90,000 copies – came as a surprise in a country that often preferred to forget its colonial past rather than deal with it. This is especially true of Algeria, where the French ruled for 132 years before being driven out in a bloody war of independence that left lasting scars.
But in a country where literary hits are something of a Rorschach test, the popularity of his latest novel may be a sign of changing times. In recent years, France has sought to recognize its history in Algeria, while calls for greater consideration of the country’s colonial legacy have sparked a new wave of books and films.
“This history has long been taboo,” Belezi, a mild-mannered 69-year-old, said during an interview in Paris last month. “It is my duty to ask questions, especially questions that people don’t want to ask. Literature can also help with that.”
The son of a factory worker who completed his military service in Algeria just before the war of independence — and who always refused to talk about his experiences — Belezi said the colonization of Algeria had puzzled him for a long time. “We were going to civilize the so-called barbarians, but we were more barbaric than them,” he said. “We stole their land and razed their mosques to the ground.”
When he started reading about this history in the early 2000s, Belezi said he discovered an unexplored “literary territory” of violence that made ideal novel material.
In one of the novel’s opening scenes, Belezi describes French soldiers running toward a remote village in the Algerian highlands at nightfall. Armed with bayonets, they kill any inhabitants who dare to resist, “by piercing their bellies, lifting them off the ground and holding them at arm’s length, like chickens on a skewer.” They then loot the houses, rape the women and let the survivors freeze out of the village.
“You are not angels!” a captain tells his bloodthirsty soldiers. “That’s right, Captain, we’re not angels,” they reply.
The French conquest of Algeria began in 1830 as a punitive expedition against the city of Algiers, then part of the Ottoman Empire, after a diplomatic dispute. But it soon turned into a full-fledged colonization that lasted more than a century and claimed the lives of some 800,000 Algerians.
“The early days of colonization were terrible,” says Colette Zytnicki, a historian at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès. She pointed to the massacres of Algerians by French soldiers — including suffocating them by smoking out caves where they took refuge — as well as the deaths of many French settlers from starvation and disease.
Belezi captured this violence in three novels released between 2008 and 2015. Based on letters from settlers and soldiers found in public archives, he records the racism that underpinned colonization and the greed that led to land expropriation, but also the doubts that gnawed at the settlers. who fled France to escape poverty.
“Algeria was a Western country in the 1940s,” Belezi said.
But unlike the bestsellers and films about the American frontier, his novels attracted little attention, apart from a few enthusiastic literary critics. It’s virtually impossible to find his earlier books (he’s written over a dozen, covering a variety of topics). For years, Belezi made his living doing what he called “odd jobs,” selling tombstones, planting tobacco on farmland, and teaching history in schools.
Belezi has rarely been invited on French television, let alone the country’s beloved literary programs, even after the success of his latest book. “People are afraid of what I will say,” he said.
After he finished writing “Attacking the Earth and the Sun,” which is narrated through the voices of a settler and a soldier, Belezi said he sent the manuscript to five publishers. All replied with polite refusals.
“I thought, ‘It’s over. I’m going to write for myself now. I will never be published again,” said Belezi, recalling how he imagined his books would only be rediscovered after his death, in booksellers’ stalls along the banks of the Seine.
Until he got a call.
“I was hooked from the very first words,” Frédéric Martin, the founder of Le Tripode, a small publishing house Belezi had desperately turned to, said of the novel. He said he told Belezi that he would not only publish it, but also reprint all his previous books.
Martin said he was drawn to Belezi’s “quirky writing style,” which avoids points and is highly lyrical, as well as the history his novels so powerfully reveal.
Critics agree. “French literature has rarely been interested in the beginnings of colonization,” says Pierre Assouline, a member of the Goncourt jury, France’s most prestigious literary prize. “It’s about time.”
Frédéric Beigbeder, a French best-selling author, told an influential literary radio program that the novel had taught him a lot. “Nobody ever told me about the colonization of Algeria in this way,” he said.
Beigbeder alluded to crimes and suffering that have long been overlooked in favor of rosier, if distorted, views of colonization, emphasizing epic conquests and economic development. Beginning in 2005, a new law required French schools to teach the “positive role” of colonialism. The obligation was lifted a year later after protest, but the discomfort about this painful past remained.
Most French novels that have focused on Algeria have focused instead on decolonization and the Algerian War of Independence, a traumatic event many experts say can only be properly understood once the initial violence is known.
“It’s time to replace a few stereotypes with a much harsher reality,” said Jacques Frémeaux, a historian at the University of Paris-Sorbonne.
The success of ‘Atattacking the Earth and the Sun’ could be just that. After winning literary awards from Le Monde and France Inter, France’s largest national newspaper and radio station, the novel climbed to the top of bestseller lists.
Eight translations are in progress and an English language version is under negotiation. A school edition with background material will be published next year.
Zytnicki said the novel’s popularity coincided with a renewed interest in the history of colonization in France as the country debated its colonial past and slave trade past. Books, podcasts and even an exhibition about Abd el-Kader, who led Algeria’s resistance to French colonization in the 1930s and 1940s, have garnered attention.
Recognizing the need to address a painful past, President Emmanuel Macron of France has made efforts to reckon with the crimes and suffering in colonial Algeria. He asked a committee of French and Algerian historians to make an inventory of the archives in order to promote the study of that period.
Belezi said he hoped he would be remembered as the writer “who did the initial work” in bringing that history to light. He originally planned to write only three novels on this subject. Then came “Attacking the Earth and the Sun,” the fourth, he said, because “it’s hard to let go.”
His novels often stem from his belief that the legacy of colonization has been downplayed. Belezi pointed to Macron last year describing French-Algerian relations as “a love story that has its tragic side.”
“My work must continue,” he said.