A review by wetherspoonsgf
Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade by Assia Djebar

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated

5.0

This is some of the most beautiful prose ever written, which feels especially important given how much time Djebar spends thinking about the act of writing and of writing in French throughout the book. 
Part 1 and 2 have something of the feel of documentary filmmaking as Djebar narrates her (our) encounter with the archive as much as the events of France's colonisation of Algeria itself, interwoven with her autofiction, before Part 3 starts on this iterative, looping, contemplative three part structure of recovery and feminist re-narration of anti-colonial work and different decolonisations. I adore this book, I think the epigraph to the Finale alone is one of the cleverest pages in all of literature.
If this book was only as intelligent and reflective on language as it is I'd love it, but the fact that it's so deeply interested in language while being so transcendently well written is once-in-a-lifetime sort of stuff. Get this back into print!