The Lovers of Algeria

Algeria Book around the World

So I am incredibly ignorant to this period in history. I am grateful to learn more about the war, The French's involvement in Algeria, and the aftermath. I started the read the world challenge for this very reason, to learn a lot more apart from my own perspective.

However, as a book this was not very good. In the same chapter we got a VARIETY of POVs, all in third person and many different perspectives. Every chapter, right after a “cliffhanger” we went through a VARIETY of time periods back and forth and forward again. This choppy formatting made it very difficult to stay engaged with the characters and very difficult to follow the storyline.

Anna's past with the circus I thought was brought in way too late in the book. By the time we went allll the way back and explored Anna's childhood and her life in the circus I felt like it was a bit too late to get her backstory? Or to care about it?

And finally, I find that almost everytime a male author tries to write a graphic sex scene (or even semi graphic) from the female POV –even in third person!– it is disturbing moreso than sensual or romantic. This really took away from the love story for me and I never really got it.

I kept reading this book for the history, what I was learning, the little boy Jallal.