La Traversée de Fiora Valencourt

Preface by Maurice Calmein.

Will it be the last of her life, this Marseille to Oran crossing that Mrs. Valencourt undertakes in the spring of 1961 to return to her native land?

Around her, on the ocean liner, the old lady encounters only the anxious faces of the French in Algeria, tense with the anguish of the next day. As for her, she escapes into her past, a past that was all love, and this book could only be the beautiful story of two beings who loved each other, long ago, in the alfa fields of the Oran highlands, if the present did not tarnish the radiance of the sky and the sun over the sea.

Whoever wants to know and understand who the French in Algeria truly are must read this book.

When this novel was first published in 1961, no one yet knew what was to become of Algeria or what would happen to a million Pieds-Noirs for whom this country was theirs. They had created it and developed it.

The 2011 reissue of this book only makes it more authentic, as it is not yet clouded by the political considerations that would tear the French apart in 1962.

Janine Montupet belongs to the land of Algeria with every fiber of her being. Her ancestors settled there as early as 1848.

Through this great novelistic fresco that constitutes the La Fontaine rouge trilogy, Janine Montupet imagined describing to us the successive owners of the La Fontaine rouge estate located in the Mitidja plain.

La Traversée de Fiora Valencourt brings this great Algerian saga to a close.

France-Algeria Collection 29