Bab-el-Oued

Bab-el-Oued raconté à Toinet (1955). Alger – Bab-el-Oued (1956). With excerpts from: Cette haine qui ressemble à l'amour (1961) – Journal d'exil (1963) – Interdit aux chiens et aux Français (1966)

If Camus sang of Belcourt, Brune focused on the district of Cagayous, Bab-el-Oued, that fascinating melting pot.

In his novel Cette haine qui ressemble à l'amour (1961) and his Journal d'exil (1963), Brune declared his love for this suburb of Algiers at length. In Interdit aux chiens et aux Français (1966), he described his ordeal, which was that of all French Algeria.

But as early as 1955, in a series of articles for La Dépêche quotidienne, it was with great tenderness and humor that Brune "told Bab-el-Oued to Toinet," adding about fifty relevant caricatures.

All these writings are gathered in this new edition.

Let us listen to Jean Brune:

"Bab-el-Oued?

It is not a Spanish city, nor Italian, nor French. It is a new city... a city like nowhere else exists.

It is a synthesis city.

It was born from the blending of everyone the Mediterranean counts as pilgrims of adventure, whose eyes are accustomed to searching beyond the horizon of the sea for elusive Eldorados.

They were proud Neapolitans, subtle Maltese, Corsicans as proud as condottieri, nonchalant Andalusians, stubborn Calabrians, tragic Catalans... and French people more skeptical than any race in the world, since they are capable of laughing even at the miracles they perform.

They imported a prodigious relentlessness for work and all the Latin traditions that count among the most sumptuous in the world.

But above all, they brought the gaiety and youth of races regenerated by exchange... a liveliness that cold and pinched bourgeois judge as vulgar, but which is only a manifestation of the spontaneity of sincere and simple people... the familiar good-naturedness of peoples who have suffered too much not to have learned the virtues of indulgence... and who know how to hide daily worries behind jokes and laughter, which are the modesty of the poor.

That is Bab-el-Oued." (Jean Brune)

With 50 illustrations and caricatures by Jean Brune.

Collection France-Algérie 43

Large format: 20 x 30 cm

88 pages / 350g