The Question
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โThe 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.โ โ D. W. Brogan,ย The New York Timesย
โWritten with spare and simple candor, the book is much more than a scalding footnote to fever-hot headlines.ย The Questionย does 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.โ โย Time
โIn his modest, unassuming and precise fashion, Alleg is describing a triumph of the human spirit... The importance of Allegโs 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 โinhumanโ 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...โ โย Scotsman
โ[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 โ except for the tortured, the outlawed โ and of social institutions.ย The Questionย is far more than an account of atrocities, however spectacular.โ โย The 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 theย Alger Rรฉpublicain, 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 tortureย for one month in El-Biar, a suburb of Algiers, at the hands of theย French Army. Allegโs account of his interrogation wasย smuggled out of prisonย and published in 1958 byย Editions de Minuitย asย La Question, and that same year in English asย The Question. Alleg gained international recognition for hisย stance against tortureย in the context of the Algerian War. The French government bannedย La Questionย after 60,000 copies had been sold. In 1960,ย a military court which barred the public and the press from the trialย condemned 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 theย Alger Rรฉpublicainย but was declared persona non grata after the 1965 military coup by Houari Boumรฉdienne. Alleg moved back to France where he worked as a journalist forย LโHumanitรฉย until 1980 and wrote several books, including a three-volume history of the Algerian War of Independence andย Algerian Memoirsย published in 2005. He died at age 91.
