ABSTRACT
The literary representation of Algerian immigration in France is riddled with contradictions. Those who have been most directly involved in the migratory process have written virtually nothing about it. The most telling accounts of the Algerian experience in France are the work of young authors who in most cases are not immigrants at all. Though Algerian by birth and upbringing, they are-in a literal sense, at any rate-at home in France. It is when they ‘return’ to Algeria (a country in which few of them ever in fact resided) that they experience the migrant condition in its most evident forms. Yet even within France, the most tiny of spatial shifts may trigger mental turmoil directly comparable to that experienced by international migrants.
