Writing the Black Decade: Conflict and Criticism in Francophone Algerian Literature examines how literature—and the way we read, classify, and critique literature—impacts our understanding of the world at a time of conflict. Using the bitterly-contested Algerian Civil War as a case study, Joseph Ford argues that, while literature is frequently understood as an illuminating and emancipatory tool, it can, in fact, restrain our understanding of the world during a time of crisis and further entrench the polarized discourses that lead to conflict in the first place. Ford demonstrates how Francophone Algerian literature, along with the cultural and academic criticism that has surrounded it, has mobilized visions of Algeria over the past thirty years that often belie the complex and multi-layered realities of power, resistance, and conflict in the region. Scholars of literature, history, Francophone studies, and international relations will find this book particularly useful.

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Ford assesses the focus of Algerian writers, artists, and journalists' focus on the events of Algeria's Black Decade (1990s) in their literary and journalistic narratives. He argues that particular authors relied on familiar—recidivist—tropes of Algerian violence inherited from the 1954–62 Algerian War of Independence, mirroring the headlines in the French press. Ford proposes the tropes were appropriated in three ways: some gathered literary accounts rooted in oppositional rendering (Rachid Mimouni, Assia Djebar, and Maïssa Bey [Samia Benameur]); others (Salim Bachi and Habib Ayyoub) inserted their testimonials in allegorical or mythical frameworks…. In dialogue with Valérie Orlando's The Algerian New Novel and Jane Hiddleston’s Writing after Postcolonialism, this informative work problematizes the position of writers facing national tragedy. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

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This is undoubtedly a thorough and well-argued book, which offers an important source for those interested in contemporary Algerian literature, and Algerian culture more broadly.