The Art of LosingThe Art of Losing

"A gripping, multigenerational tale of a French Algerian woman, her family's past, and the legacies of colonialism"--
The Algerian War for Independence sent Naïma’s grandfather on a journey, from wealthy olive grove owner and respected veteran of the First World War, to refugee spurned as a harki by his fellow Algerians in the transit camps of southern France, to immigrant barely scratching out a living in the north. Naïma knows Algeria only by the artifacts she encounters in her grandparents’ tiny apartment in Normandy: the language her grandmother speaks but Naïma can’t understand, the food her grandmother cooks, and the precious things her grandmother carried when they fled. Naïma's father claims to remember nothing; he has made himself French. Now Naïma is traveling to Algeria to see for herself what was left behind-- including her family's secrets. -- adapted from jacket