La brousse qui mangea l'homme. Algérie 1914. Roman colonial

Charles Courtin, Algerianist novelist

Seduced by the panegyric of Algeria, Prosper Duroux, a mediocre and narrow-minded peasant, left his native Provence in 1914 to settle with his mother on a farm near Raspail, in the austerity of the high plateaus. There lives the Berber tribe of the Ouled Yahia, the Chaouia, once driven from their southern pastures by other tribes and who in turn occupied this desert as far as the eye can see on the Algerian-Tunisian border.

They strive by all means to drive the colonists, these new infidel intruders, out of the Land of Islam, aided by their ally: the bush, this man-eater.

With breathtaking precision, Charles Courtin, born in Blida in 1884 and drawing on his long experience as an administrator, paints for us in La brousse qui mangea l homme the complex microcosm of this Balzacian Colonial Comedy which quickly turns into a tragedy.

This first Algerianist novel by Courtin is much more true than any historical or sociological analysis, without losing its impressive aesthetic value. Its main quality is nevertheless to expose and analyze with accuracy and objectivity the respective mentalities of all the protagonists.

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

Notes and comments by Wolf Albes