The Question
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тАЬThe lesson of this book... is that we are all on the edge of savagery and if we begin to slip over that edge, we fall fast and far.тАЭ тАФ D. W. Brogan,┬аThe New York Times┬а
тАЬWritten with spare and simple candor, the book is much more than a scalding footnote to fever-hot headlines.┬аThe Question┬аdoes not stop with the Algerian question but goes on to ask: What does it mean to be a human being? It tells of the shame and glory of man.тАЭ тАФ┬аTime
тАЬIn his modest, unassuming and precise fashion, Alleg is describing a triumph of the human spirit... The importance of AllegтАЩs book extends far beyond Algeria and France. For this is what can happen anywhere; what does happen in many parts of the world and what could happen here. There is nothing тАШinhumanтАЩ about it. It is too, too human. To hush it up, to deny it for any reason whatever is to be an accomplice of the torturers...тАЭ тАФ┬аScotsman
тАЬ[A] noble and in a sense ennobling book, the dominant impression it leaves is one of a progressive and finally an almost total degradation, a degradation both of persons тАФ except for the tortured, the outlawed тАФ and of social institutions.┬аThe Question┬аis far more than an account of atrocities, however spectacular.тАЭ тАФ┬аThe Nation
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Henri Alleg (1921-2013), born Harry Salem to Jewish parents from Russia and Poland, studied literature at the Sorbonne, became a French-Algerian journalist and a member of the Communist Party. He started writing under the name Alleg for the┬аAlger R├йpublicain, a daily newspaper sympathetic to Algerian nationalism, and became its editor-in-chief in 1951. In June 1957, he was arrested on suspicion of undermining the power of the French state, andunderwent torture┬аfor one month in El-Biar, a suburb of Algiers, at the hands of the┬аFrench Army. AllegтАЩs account of his interrogation was┬аsmuggled out of prison┬аand published in 1958 by┬аEditions de Minuit┬аas┬аLa Question, and that same year in English as┬аThe Question. Alleg gained international recognition for his┬аstance against torture┬аin the context of the Algerian War. The French government banned┬аLa Question┬аafter 60,000 copies had been sold. In 1960,┬аa military court which barred the public and the press from the trial┬аcondemned Alleg to 10 years of hard labor in France, but he escaped from prison in 1961 and took refuge in Czechoslovakia.
After the 1962 Evian Accords, Alleg returned to France and then to Algeria. He helped rebuild the┬аAlger R├йpublicain┬аbut was declared persona non grata after the 1965 military coup by Houari Boum├йdienne. Alleg moved back to France where he worked as a journalist for┬аLтАЩHumanit├й┬аuntil 1980 and wrote several books, including a three-volume history of the Algerian War of Independence and┬аAlgerian Memoirs┬аpublished in 2005. He died at age 91.
