This elegant, haunting novel takes us deep into the world of bookstore owner Boualem Yekker. He lives in a country being overtaken by the Vigilant Brothers, a radically conservative party that seeks to control every element of life according to the laws of their stringent moral theology: no work of beauty created by human hands should rival the wonders of their god. Once-treasured art and literature are now despised. Silently holding his ground, Boualem withstands the new regime, using the shop and his personal history as weapons against puritanical forces. Readers are taken into the lush depths of the bookseller's dreams, the memories of his now-empty family life, his passion for literature, then yanked back into the terror and drudgery of his daily routine by the vandalism, assaults, and death warrants that afflict him. story that reveals how far an ordinary human being will go to maintain hope. Tahar Djaout (1954-93) was an Algerian novelist, poet, and journalist, and the author of twelve books, including Les vigiles, winner of the Prix Mediterranee. by an Islamic fundamentalist group. The manuscript of this novel was found among his papers after his death.

Le 04 janvier 1960, Albert Camus s'en allait un peu dans un tragique accident de voiture a l'age de 47 ans. Quatre annees auparavant, il etait l'un des plus jeunes ecrivains a recevoir le prix Nobel de litterature pour toute son oeuvre. L'enfance pauvre a Belcourt, la passion du football, le journalisme a Alger Republicain puis l'exclusion et l'exil par la France de Vichy, Camus sera force de monter a Paris. Il rejoindra la Resistance et sera le redacteur en chef de Combat. Romancier, dramaturge, essayiste, Camus sera aussi acteur et metteur en scene. Apres la publication de L'Homme revolte, puis la rupture avec son ami Jean-Paul Sartre, il quittera Combat puis ecrira des articles sur l'Algerie avant de se taire completement, sans neanmoins cesser d'agir en silence. Certainement pas existentialiste, anti-communiste tres tot, il avait ete l'Intellectuel de la periode 45-60 d'apres la liberation, celui dont le nom finira par etre oppose a celui de Sartre. Si Camus est mort jeune, il aura vecu pleinement sa courte vie; et s'il est encore difficile de le categoriser, il reste encore d'actualite, souleve souvent des passions, ne laissant jamais indifferent. Peut-on parler d'un heritage camusien ? Que reste-t-il de son oeuvre en Amerique ? Afin de ne pas oublier cet etranger si familier, pour le cinquantenaire de la mort de Camus, le Bureau du Doyen des Etudes Internationales et le Centre d'Etudes Europeennes de l'Universite du Wisconsin-Madison ont organise du 22 au 24 avril 2010, un symposium Albert Camus, 50 ans apres, autour des trois grands themes suivants: Camus et l'Algerie, Camus et l'exil, Camus et le public. Une quinzaine d'universitaires, de chercheurs, et de professeurs, d'Algerie, de France, du Canada et des Etats-Unis, etaient presents a ces journees dont nous publions les Actes dans cet ouvrage. L'objectif de ce second colloque etait de creer un debat autour de Camus et de sa vision, souvent prophetique, relire ses ecrits litteraires et politiques et voir dans quelle mesure son oeuvre pacifiste, peut etre une source d'inspiration dans les luttes pour la liberte et la democratie, une alternative a la violence et a la terreur qui demeurent aujourd'hui encore, helas tres actuelles.

"Hell is other people," Jean-Paul Sartre famously wrote in "No Exit," The fantastic tragicomedy "Madah-Sartre" brings him back from the dead to confront the strange and awful truth of that statement. As the story begins, Sartre and his consort in intellect and love, Simone de Beauvoir, are on their way to the funeral of Tahar Djaout, an Algerian poet and journalist slain in 1993. En route they are kidnapped by Islamic terrorists and ordered to convert . . . or die. Since they are already dead, fearless Sartre gives the terrorists a chance to convince him with reason. What follows is, as James D. Le Sueur writes in his introduction, "one of the most imaginative and provocative plays of our era." Sartre, one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, finds himself in an absurd yet deadly real debate with armed fanatics about terrorism, religion, intellectuals, democracy, women's rights, and secularism, trying to bring his opponents back to their senses in an encounter as disturbing as it is compelling.