THE STAR OF ALGIERS

An Algerian singer finds his star waning with the onslaught of the Islamic revolution—in musician-playwright Chouaki’s politically trenchant third novel, his first to appear in English.

It’s 1990 when, in Algiers, the first rumblings by Islamist extremists are heeded by the disaffected and largely impoverished populace. Méziane Boudjiri, known as Moussa Massy on stage, is 36 and a singer of modern Kabyle (African Berber) music who lives in three rooms with fourteen of his family members in a soulless apartment block called Cité Mer et Soleil. Moussa is handsome, scornful of the “beards,” and determined to make a name for himself and to quit the grinding despair of his country. Yet, despite his stint of well-paying gigs, Moussa’s income goes to help support his family, and marriage to the lovely, sheltered Fatiha is out of the question without an apartment of his own. With a smooth, wealthy diplomat’s son, Rachid, acting as his manager, Moussa gains a newspaper interview and is hired to play at upscale clubs frequented by the European-educated upper class; his name is well known and he even begins to record his music—before it’s pirated and adulterated without his consent. Moussa’s star seems to be inexorably tied to the fate of his country: with the takeover by the Islamists, his fellow musicians flee the country, his girlfriend’s traditional family forces her to marry a more suitable cousin, and the fancy club Moussa works for becomes a den of thugs. “Day after day, Moussa deteriorates, at the same pace of Algeria, allegro,” Chouaki writes in his dictation-like prose, switching briefly from third person to first and jotting off strings of graphic impressions. Chouaki’s spurts of slangy dialogue read a bit stilted in English, but the overall result is viscerally affecting. Descending into drug abuse, apathy, and violence, Moussa is eventually transformed into the same fanatic, cold-blooded Jihadist he once reviled.

A chilling portrait of painful attempts to reconcile past colonial sins with crying present needs.