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World Hotels - The Algeria Hotel: France, Memory, and the Second World War
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List Price: $26.00
Our Price: $19.76
Your Save: $ 6.24 ( 24% )
Availability: Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5344
EAN: 9780395902455
ISBN: 0395902452
Label: Houghton Mifflin
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2001-07-16
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Studio: Houghton Mifflin
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Editorial Reviews:
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Adam Nossiter spent part of his youth in France. During those years, in the mid-1960s, President de Gaulle forged the myth that France bravely resisted the German occupiers of World War II and that the nation was innocent in the crimes of the Holocaust. Collaboration with Germany and the deportations of Jews were subjects not dwelt on -- not until many years later.
THE ALGERIA HOTEL is Nossiter's intensely personal confrontation with the effects of this awakening to the underside of the French record in the war. For three years he lived and traveled in France, listening to people talk about the war -- mapping their stories, silences, evasions, and even lies. In Bordeaux, Nossiter follows the trial of Maurice Papon, the retired French official accused a half century later of orchestrating the deportation of Jews. He settles in Vichy, the seat of France's wartime government; shadowed by the Algeria Hotel, which housed the agency for Jewish affairs, Nossiter journeys into the dark heart of France's compromises with the Nazis. In Tulle, he listens for the echoes of a single afternoon when the Nazis carried out a terrible massacre of the town's residents.
An artful weave of vivid portraits, clear-eyed reporting, and meticulous historical research, The Algeria Hotel is an absorbing and resonant portrait of a nation and its people. Illuminating the many ways painful memories of the past leave their mark on the present, Nossiter reveals deep truths about how we remember and why we forget. The result is a searching and beautifully written narrative of how the French today live their lives haunted by the war and its crimes.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Well written and informative
Comment: I didn't know much about wartime in France. So, I found the book about Vichy, Bordeaux, and Tulle very informative. The author writes extrememly well, and the subject is intersting to say the least. the author also was extremely creative and thorough in ferreting out survivors of that period for interviews.
All in all, while I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to readers intersted in a view of France not often seen in the popular histories, it seemd to go on a bit. I found the part about Vichy the most readable, and memorable.
I'm not really sure why I didn't enjoy it more. At the conclusion, I was left with a feeling that there was less there than met the eye.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A worthwhile read
Comment: As a reader with no particular agenda except that a book be well-written and/or informative, I found Nossiter's latest work to be a bit weak stylistically but strong in reportage.He describes all too well the phenomena of the Emperor's new clothes - townspeople turning a blind eye to the obvious, and rationalizing their actions to an extreme. Shadows of the horrors which occured hang over the selected three towns he visited even today though the people and the physical settings have changed almost beyond recognition.I found especially interesting the part the American Embassy in Vichy and its employees played during these dark days.A book which increases my knowledge of a time and place and which impels me to do further reading on the subject is one I like to recommend to others.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A compelling read
Comment: Usually, there's nothing like a thorough French bashing to put me in good spirits...I feel I'm entitled after living there for many years. But this book was very effective in showing the compromising, cowardly side of the French during WWII in a very subtle and unsettling way. Nossiter, like a good journalist, lets people tell their own stories, and somehow get people to talk themselves into some pretty deep holes. My one criticism is that the book is too scholarly, the topic is certainly dramatic, and I think that it drags a bit in some places. I once read that the French haven't yet figured out which side they were on in WWII. So true.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A compelling read
Comment: Usually, there's nothing like a thorough French bashing to put me in good spirits...I feel I'm entitled after living there for many years. But this book was very effective in showing the compromising, cowardly side of the French during WWII in a very subtle and unsettling way. Nossiter, like a good journalist, lets people tell their own stories, and somehow get people to talk themselves into some pretty deep holes. My one criticism is that the book is too scholarly, the topic is certainly dramatic, and I think that it drags a bit in some places. I once read that the French haven't yet figured out which side they were on in WWII. So true.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Algeria Hotel
Comment: The author takes upon himself a thesis too difficult argue successfully. His conclusions are evident before his evidence is presented. I found the narrative clumsy and repetitive.
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