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Fantasia An Algerian Cavalcade is written by Assia Djebar. The novel is an intertwining narrative that rotates chapters between historical accounts from the military incursion of the French into Algeria, Algerian Maquis forces, personal memories, and pieced together interviews from Algerians who lived through the conflicts.

There are a multitude of characters who make brief appearances throughout the book and the narration style is occasionally unclear who is speaking and thus the attachment of characters who make a fleeting appearance is, at times, unclear. The book can be split into four main portions; The historic description of the military struggle between Algerians and France, Djebar’s own memories, the story of Cherifa, and stories from abroad during the 22 years of conflicts.

Throughout the book she covers multiple traditional and contemporary practices of the Muslims in Algeria. Showing common customs and interactions both with each other and foreigners. Djebar offers multiple examples of traditions that are specific to specific regions. These include the interaction between men and women in a variety of settings, musical and dance traditions, the importance of appearance and clothings in different situations,

Her autobiographical portions of the book have a broken timeline that moves back and forth through different regions and phases of her life. Some of the main characters of her story remained unnamed throughout her entire story and others are named and described in detail. The beginning stories focus on friendships, traditions and a secret rebellion against the tradition of how men and women are supposed to interact. She starts with her memories of holidays with three sisters and the taboo of writing to men, and the thrill she gets from it. Her story addresses her own dealing with what she seems to perceive as a repressive system, the sisters and their own thrills from writing letters, as well as her own sexual experiences in Paris, as well as some stories from when she was recently married. Her tale that results in marriage and communication in defiance of her father and culture.

Though she rotates each chapter in the first half of the book by the telling Algeria’s tale with a telling of her own. Djebar deftly weaves a tale of the key members of the French army who take the offensive describing both their tactics as well as their mannerisms, and she does as well if not better describing the Algerian defenders and their stand against the French. She has pulled these accounts from historic writings to their homes, accounts in personal journals, and military correspondence. In addition to key leaders she finds accounts of those who were involved tangentially but received comprehensive information. Her coverage of the military efforts of the French start with their appearance on Algerian shores. She states that the locals were overconfident because of the multiple European forces that had been turned away before. Hussein Dey the ruler at the time was in charge of the defense of the region. She details the critical battle before the fall of Algiers, the Battle of Staoueli. Her description continues with the change in the Algerian forces leadership, their attempted defense and the fall of the Emperor towers which was the last line of defense for the city of Algiers. After the fall of the Algiers, she mostly describes the same French military members and the defensive measures of the Algerians. Her most detailed references of the Algerian defenses described the Amir and Bu Maza.

Lastly, the story of Cherifa, is a story gained by interviewing an older woman that directly involved with the Maquis defiance from the beginning to the end in multiple regions. She continued her efforts in the face of overwhelming odds, torture, loss of all her belongings multiple times, and still remained devoted to a cause and a group of rebels. She raised her family to be devoted to it too. She watched as they acted in defense of her ideals. She lost family multiple family members through the struggle. Her narrative is overall rather chronological and covers her actions as a young girl all the way until she was older and sending off her children.