The opposing sides in the war are well represented by two works--Jean Larteguy's (1920- ) The Centurions (1960; trans., 1961) and Assia Djebar's (1936- ) Women of Algiers in Their Apartments (1980; trans., 1992)--that conflict with each other not only in terms of political ideology but also in their views of men and women. The Centurions is a celebration of a group of French paratroopers, who embody a right-wing, masculine ideal: beautifully conditioned fighting machines, equally successful in the bedrooms and the battlefields, courageously courting death and beautiful women, true patriots fighting to save France from the effete decadence that has sapped its strength and sold out French Algeria. Their leader in Colonel Raspeguy, who moulds a disparate group of French soldiers, defeated at the battle of Dienbienphu in the Indochina War, into a special force capable of fighting a guerrilla war. They engage in the "dirty war" of torture and dismemberment because those are the terms the rebels have introduced. American readers, familiar with Robin Moore's 1965 popular novel, Green Berets, will recognize the similarity of tone and character type in this work.

In dramatic contrast to Larteguy's paean to French virility stands Assia Djebar's Women of Algiers in Their Apartments, a collection of short stories written between 1958 and 1978, a number of which reflect on the critical role that Arab women played in the battle. In the battle of Algiers, for example, the rebels used women to carry bombs into the European quarter of the city, and it was women prisoners who suffered torture and rape at the hands of French troops. But once independence was gained, the traditional Muslim customs in regard to women were reintroduced. In Djebar's words, women were again subject to the "law of invisibility, the law of silence."

Women of Algiers in Their Apartments is the title of a famous painting by Ferdinand Delacroix, who visited Algeria in 1832, shortly after the French invasion and occupation of the country. His painting depicts three women in a local sultan's harem, imprisoned, it seems, in a mysterious, soft light against a dark background. The women evoke a sense of sadness that contributes to the painting's power. Djebar's use of the painting (it is also used as the jacket design of the book) reinforces her attempt at showing that the condition of women in postcolonial Algeria is essentially unchanged. In "There Is No Exile," the narrator, divorced and mourning the death of her two children, is living with her family in exile from war-torn Algiers, all longing to return home. Without any prior notice, she is told that a group of women will be arriving shortly to arrange her marriage. At the same time, a child has died in the apartment next door, so the keening of the women forms a constant background to the daily activities. When the prospective groom's family arrives, she announces, to everyone's astonishment, that she does not wish to marry anyone. She later confides to a friend that she cannot forget the war and the death of her children. She "keeps bumping into the walls of the past." She, as her friend points out, is a "true exile." In an essay, "Forbidden Gaze, Severed Sound," appended to these stories, Djebar comments at length on the significance of the Delacroix painting in its representation of the history of Muslim women.

The war also created personal crises for those French Algerians who recognized the need for compromise. Among the most illustrious products of this community was the renowned writer and thinker Albert Camus (1913-60). Two of his best-known novels, The Stranger (1942) and The Plague (1947), are set in Algeria, but these were written years before the uprising. During the war itself, Camus, who had been living in Paris for many years, parted company with his peer Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80) and the great majority of French intellectuals by declaring his opposition to Algerian independence, even though he was acutely aware of the injustices that colonial rule had imposed upon the Arab majority. He found himself caught between justice and, as he put it, his "mother," that is, his deeply rooted identity as a French Algerian.

Camus's dilemma is powerfully captured in his short story "L'Hote" (1957). Daru, a schoolteacher in a remote area of Algeria, is forced to hold an Arab prisoner in his schoolhouse overnight and to bring him to prison the next day. Daru decides not to obey the order. He brings the Arab to a fork in the road, gives him some money, and indicates the road to prison and the road that will take him to a Nomad tribe that will hide him. The prisoner chooses the road to prison. When Daru returns to the schoolhouse, he finds scrawled on the blackboard the message, "You handed over our brother. You will pay for this." The story encapsulates the situation of the liberal French Algerian in general and Camus in particular. Daru's attempt to sidestep the consequences of the decision is doomed in the clash of mighty opposites that the war has unleashed. A key to the dilemma is the title of the story "L'Hote," which translates as either "host" or "guest." In one sense, Daru is the host and his Arab prisoner is the guest. But, in reality, in Algeria, the French are the guests, uninvited and unwelcome. Despite his best efforts, Daru is a guest in the country of his birth, and as the story concludes, he looks north in the direction of Europe, knowing that is where he must go. It would appear that Camus in fiction, if not in fact, was bowing to the inevitable.

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