L'Effacement (2016), contemporary Algerian author Samir Toumi's second novel, is a first-person narrative by an unnamed 44-year old man. To the protagonist's horror his reflection in the mirror is slowly disappearing despite psychiatric treatments prescribed by 'Doctor B' who explains that the protagonist's malady is 'le syndrome de l'effacement ... ' (the erasure...

Albert Camus's conflicted legacy in Algeria not only reveals his vague place in the annuals of Algerian history, but also offers authors a means to segue into other moral, humanist and postcolonial questions confronting Algeria's post-années noires (the Dark Years, also known as the Black Decade), the rarely discussed and psychologically troubling 1990s civil war p...