Café maure. Algérie 1934. Roman colonial

Cafe maure, the warning that went unheeded

Between 1929 and 1946, Charles Courtin, born in Blida in 1884, published six colonial novels, also known as Algerianist novels, including Cafe maure (1939).

Building on his 30 years of experience as an administrator of mixed communes in southeastern Algeria, Courtin perfectly understands the mentality and aspirations of the Muslim population, as well as those of his pieds-noirs compatriots and metropolitan French, whom he describes with impressive precision and objectivity.

His assessment of the political situation in Algeria in the 1930s is alarming: in Cafe maure, the reader is confronted with the clashes between different Muslim religious and nationalist movements in Algiers. And all the elements are already present that will inexorably lead to the insurrection of May 1945 in the North Constantinois, and that of November 1, 1954.

Why was this stunning warning from Charles Courtin not heard?

While we are indeed entering a fictional world, it must be emphasized that the author bases himself on his own experiences and that several of his protagonists refer to very real political actors of the time.

With the foreword to the novel Du sang sur la dune (1942) by Charles Courtin.

Notes and commentary by Wolf Albes.