What Frantz Fanon and Ian Fleming Agreed On

Algerians had been waging an independence war for nearly two years, and the French had been fighting back fiercely, including with widespread torture and indiscriminate killings. The September 30th bombings, however, marked what Drif called a “turning point,” bringing the war “to the heart of the enemy districts.” Yet even the Communist who had built the rebels’ explosives laboratory balked at bombing crowded public places. The philosopher Albert Camus, an Algerian-born Frenchman, sympathized with the Algerians but could no longer support them. Their attacks, he noted, might kill his mother: “If that is justice, then I prefer my mother.”The Best Books of 2023