Adel Monchaoui
Adel Monchaoui, a lover of Prévert, whom a journalist described as a "Prévertian" engineer, has published his first novel. He possesses the pride and tenacity of the Chaoui Berber, the generosity of a peasant, and the idealism and intelligence of a progressive. An enemy of routine, bigots, and those who go around in circles, Adel Monchaoui is a free thinker. A fitter from the age of 17, an industrial draftsman, a technician, an engineer by trade with some time spent at HEC business school, and a writer in his spare time… He came to reading and writing on his own. Today, at 74, he joins Régine Laprade, an established author deeply attached to the Maghreb of her childhood. Both want to bear witness to their time: wars, peace, suffering, torture, betrayals, and beyond all that, they retain forgiveness, humanism, tolerance and friendship for any person of good will, regardless of their sex, origin, color, disability, religion, as long as they are humane… with their hearts on their sleeves for the needy.
We know so little about each other
A family. Endearing and colorful characters who, across generations, take us from Périgord to Lyon, from Burgundy to Provence, and lead us to the 1950s. It's the beginning of the "events in Algeria." Gilbert, a lawyer, steeped in his grandmother's humanist ideals, meets Monique in Marseille, a trade unionist and communist like her father. They marry. She helps Algerians who tell her about their struggle for their country's independence. The young couple, deeply committed to justice and the fundamental values of our Republic, decides to move there. They discover a magnificent country, forge friendships with ordinary workers—Muslim, Christian, Jewish—confronted with the horrors of war… Will they emerge unscathed? In France, sixty years after Algeria's independence, the media constantly address the still difficult and painful Franco-Algerian relationship. The wound has not healed. But do we know each other better today than we did yesterday? With this novel, Adel Monchaoui and Régine Laprade aim to reveal what many of us still ignore. People used to say, "Algeria is France." Yet, in the land of equality, two distinct communities coexisted with different rights. What do we truly know about this war, about events silenced and kept secret? The silence is beginning to break. Sadly, many witnesses have passed away. Current generations, neither guilty nor responsible, demand to hear history presented differently, not through truncated, concealed, and distorted realities shaped by a racist, resentful mindset that continues to divide people, leading to mutual ignorance.
Akli - A Berber in turmoil
This novel tells the story of a young man, Akli. He is Berber, one of those proud, courageous, determined men, devoted to justice and freedom. He could have been born elsewhere, among another people, in another country. It doesn't matter. He is their alter ego; the story would be the same. He comes from a small, poor village perched on a mountainside. His father taught him that at school, you have to work hard to be first, that education is a bulwark against poverty. So Akli sees this as a challenge. He is first. His father dies. Now it's up to him to work to feed his family. He has to forget about school. Events conspire against him. Akli is caught in a whirlwind of troubles and disasters. Yet he hasn't forgotten the challenge, the principles his father taught him. Will he have the strength, the courage, the luck to make it through? What will his struggle be to overcome all the difficulties? In this novel, the authors meticulously depict Berber society, customs, and the pride of their people. The dialogues and everyday life, recounted with attention to detail, offer the pleasure of reading, as well as the visual appeal they evoke. Ultimately, it confronts the reader with realities that are, unfortunately, universal: poverty, corruption, the power of money, stolen and confiscated freedoms, inequality… and also religious dogmatism and other forms of extremism that lead to all kinds of abuses. However, this novel strives for optimism. It pays tribute to honest, open-minded, humane, and compassionate men and women who reach out to the weakest and most destitute, to those who risk death to survive.
