In 2003 the north African country of Algeria was in a state of recovery after a decade-long civil war that claimed the lives of over 160,000 Islamic fundamentalists, government troops and innocent civilians. On May 21 of that year a 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck just east of the capital of Algiers, and over 2,000 Algerians were killed in the initial quake and the aftershocks that followed over the next several days. The government came under intense scrutiny and criticism, as many recently constructed buildings collapsed due to shoddy building design and materials, and local and national officials provided inadequate and untimely aid to the earthquake survivors. As a result, the already fragile psyche of the Algerian people was damaged even further, as thousands of citizens faced displacement, fetid and disease ridden tent cities, violence, and post-traumatic psychological trauma.

Maïssa Bey, born near Algiers in 1950, originally taught literature until the 1990s, when she began to write in response to the effect of the war that plagued her country. She dedicated this novel to the memory of victims of natural disasters, including the 2003 earthquake and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

The remainder of the review can be found in issue 12 of Belletrista: http://www.belletrista.com/2011/Issue12/anth_14.php ( )