The Architecture of Memory: A Jewish-Muslim Household in Colonial Algeria, 1937 1962 - Paperback

by Joelle Bahloul (Author), Bahloul Joelle (Author), Meyer Fortes (Editor)

Recalling how they lived in a single house that was occupied by several Jewish and Muslim families, in the generation before Algerian independence, Joelle Bahloul's informants build up a multi-voice microhistory of a way of life that came to an end in the early l960s. Uprooted and dispersed, these former neighbors constantly refer back to the architecture of the home itself, which, with its internal boundaries and shared spaces, structures their memories. Here, in miniature, is a domestic history of North African Muslims, Jews and Christians living under French colonial rule.

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Recalling the way they lived in a single Algerian house that was occupied by several families, Jewish and Muslim, in the generation before the independence of Algeria, Joelle Bahloul's informants build up a multivocal micro-history of a way of life which came to an end in the early 1960s. Uprooted and now dispersed, these former neighbours constantly refer to the architecture of the house itself, which, with its internal boundaries and shared spaces, structures their memories. Here, in miniature, is a domestic history of North African Muslims, Jews, and Christians, living under French colonial rule.