At the turn of this century, when the French government finally acknowledged the Algerian War of Independence as a war and not an ‘operation to maintain order’, as it had been designated previously, interest in the war's legacy and its impact on both France and Algeria has expanded. The volume under review is the result of a conference held at the University of Leicester in 2012 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Algerian independence. It is divided into three parts, containing 11 articles and a concluding chapter by James McDougall on the period 1967–81, when community conflict in Algeria revolved around cultural struggles which, McDougall argues was ‘war by other means’.

Part One contains four articles ‘re-imagining colonial conflicts and relationships’ during France's twentieth-century wars. The first three articles examine events relating to the two World Wars and the fourth looks at the representation of Algerians in the National Assembly from 1958 to 1962. The articles allude, either directly or indirectly, to the wartime vulnerability of France in the face of colonial unrest or activism in the colony. Samuel Kalman's contribution, which opens the volume, examines the policing of banditry in the Constantinois during the First World War, which increased sharply as Algerians deserted or fled into the hinterland to escape conscription. Kalman argues that the activities of these fugitives, who tried to foment rebellion in the villages as well as target settlers, foreshadowed postwar nationalism. Subsequent articles in the section examine the decrees relating to Muslim conscription and the importance of Emir Khaled, the grandson of Abd-el-Kader, as a symbolic figure in the later development of resistance to French domination. The final chapter considers the rise and eventual marginalization of the newly appointed Muslim deputies during the war of independence, reminding us that the first female minister of the Fifth Republic was a Muslim woman, Nafissa Sid Cara. Taken together, the chapters in the section depart from standard accounts of the emergence of nationalism by pointing to the contributions of less recognized events and more ambiguous players.

The four articles of the second section consider identity as constructed and contested in literature and film. The identity of the pied-noir poet Jean Sénac is the subject of the first article. His writing, Blandine Valfort declares, reflects the contested identities of colonial and postcolonial Algeria, while his ‘gagged homosexuality’ is an indication of a certain marginalization and fracturing of that identity. The political power of language is also investigated, as the articles discussing the works of Assia Djebar and Maïssa Bey make clear. Rachida Yassine argues that Assia Djebar, like other bilingual intellectuals, used her facility in Arabic and French in her most well known novel, L'Amour, la fantasia, as a tool of decolonization. Bey, on the other hand, writes about the discursive violence against Algerians and, according to the article by Samira Farhoud and Carey Watt, connects the misunderstandings between France and Algeria to the stereotypes that were affixed to Algerian identity during the colonial period. Patricia Caillé concludes the section by examining the national film industry of Algeria, which emerged in the shadow of the 1954–62 war but was dissolved in the 1990s (even though the actual production of Algerian films did not cease). Caillé seeks to unravel the widely held belief that Algerian film emerged in the maquis, a fact that inexorably bound together the war, the establishment of the nation, and Algerian cinema. In doing so, she provides insights into the themes that preoccupied film producers of that era, and situates differing analyses of cinema's emergence in postcolonial Algeria.

The two chapters of the final section assess the way in which Algeria is remembered in the metropole. Jennifer Sessions investigates the post-independence repatriation from Algeria of the statue of the Duc d'Orléans. As might be expected, pied-noir organizations that considered him a hero of the conquest were eager to ensure a suitable site in France for its reinstallation. They were not alone, however, as the descendants of the Duke, in particular Henri d'Orléans, realized that the statue could serve as a fine tribute to the family's historical legacy. The commemorative value of the statue, which ended up in Neuilly, thus served both royalist and repatriate legacies. The article traces the aspirations of both sides and their negotiations, which finally led to an accord between them. Claire Eldridge's article ends the final section. It examines the way in which pied-noir activists shaped current debates about the Algerian War and have striven, against generational odds, to ensure the transmission of their memory work. As younger generations of the community meld into the French mainstream, their activist energy takes on new forms.

McDougall's coda to the volume shifts the focus to Algeria and examines the political agenda to re-Islamize Algerian society and its demographic consequences. The cultural politics that ensued, McDougall argues, set the stage for the debacle of the 1989–92 attempt at pluralism and the murderous civil war that ensued.

The diverse essays in Algeria Revisited make an absorbing contribution to the scholarship on the legacy of the Algerian War. The volume will be useful to both students and scholars as they continue to examine the ramifications of the way the war is remembered and relived.