PARIS – Azouz Begag’s latest book, “L’arbre ou la maison,” presents the author’s simultaneous feelings of displacement and belonging in Sétif, Algeria, as a second-generation immigrant.

 Azouz Begag, a Franco-Algerian sociologist, novelist, and former French government minister, tackles the topics of migration, immigration, French colonialism, and Algerian history in his works. Begag often details the return to a country where the characters’ ancestral roots lie, causing a feeling of marginal or uncertain identity, grappling between the French and Algerian sides. Begag grew up in a shantytown in Lyon, speaking and learning the language of the coloniser. 

 “L’arbre ou la maison,” which translates to “The tree or the house” is narrated by Begag, as he describes the rupture between ancestral roots and French culture he felt when him and his brother Samy returned to Sétif to visit their childhood home and parent’s graves. The novel emits an image of Algerian ancestral roots anchoring the tree of his identity to the ground, while its leaves blossom a French influence. 

 In a novel punctuated by nostalgia, political unrest, identity, and love, the reader is immersed into the sensorial descriptions of Sétif with the descriptions of the freshly baked bread, the incense, the jasmine, and the cumin in the air. The noisy street vendors, the storks, the descriptions of the rolling, velvety landscapes in neighbourhoods once familiar to him blur as the glasses of childhood are removed. A country in the midst of a democratic revolution (Hirak) with anarchy on the streets and untrustworthy tenants in his family house, now feels foreign and distant to him. 

 After a nightmare about his mother’s death, the narrator is propelled to return to Sétif. Azouz reunites with his brother Samy after a year and convinces him to take the journey with him. 

 Their trip to Sétif is narrated in between anecdotes from their childhood. Travelling home during his childhood, hand in hand with his father, the narrator felt more of a comforting sense of belonging in his country of origin. On return, their childhood home in the Beaumarchis has been taken over by a poplar tree whose roots threaten the foundations of the house. The house is personified, described as having stopped breathing, strangled by the roots of the tree and its lack of childhood vivacity.

The title of the semi-autobiographic novel “L’arbre ou la maison” evokes this image of the poplar tree having overtaken the symbol of the narrator’s childhood with its roots entangling with those of the narrator and eventually anchoring its own down, claiming the house, and leaving it to crumble. 

 The narrator’s return to Lyon is perhaps the most poignant and reflective of the novel. An image of the house, governed by the poplar tree and the cats that reside on its branches with the red writing on the front: ‘Get out!’ is left behind. This image gradually fades away with the view of his country from the plane window. The house doomed to be overtaken by the tree is left behind with the narrator’s childhood and nostalgia. All that remains is the book he has, given to him by his love interest, Ryme, “Le Premier Homme.” A ladybird, the last tie with his land, slips out of it and flies away.

 A novel rich with sensorial descriptions, metaphoric prose and emotion, “L’arbre ou la maison” gives the reader an intimate view into the life of the narrator in his journey to rediscover his roots. Childhood anecdotes, at times Arabic phrases, and images of a now anarchic country tie together the author’s view of his country and heritage as a child and his feelings towards it now. His childhood nostalgia becomes ever distant, escaping him like the ladybird from the book, set free into the faraway horizon. 

 Azouz Begag

 Éditions Julliard

 294 pages, £16

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