Tomorrow they will not dare to kill us
By Joseph Andras
Translated by Simon Leser
France has never been so good at wrestling with its colonial past. One of the most persistent ghosts haunting the present-day republic is the brutal war it waged in Algeria, its former colony, from 1954 to 1962. After the conflict, France has long denied the human rights violations in its name, censoring numerous works of fiction and non-fiction that exposed facts to the contrary. This censorship has led to the entangled personal and political realities being muted under the great story of this anti-colonial struggle – the clear and shifting investments of communists; pieds-noirs, or European settlers born in Algeria; colonial soldiers and officials; pro-French indigenous harkis; and Algerian militants, among others.
It is precisely this complexity that colors Joseph Andras’ electrifying debut novel, “Tomorrow They Won’t Dare to Kill Us”. The novel, originally published in 2016 in France, won the Prix Goncourt for the first novel (which Andras refused) and was announced as a unique live re-creation of this tragic period in French and Algerian history. Andras gives a rude account of the capture and execution of the real revolutionary Fernand Iveton by the French army. Iveton, a pied-noir, communist and supporter of Algerian independence, planted a bomb in a factory just outside Algiers in November 1956. He set up the bomb to explode after working hours, with the intention of avoiding casualties, but it was discovered and defused. Nevertheless, Iveton was brutally tortured, hastily tried and subjected to a guillotine – the only European to face this fate during the Algerian war.
Andras puts most into the intimate dimensions of this radical life. He hastens the first pages of his novel through Iveton’s prospective act of sabotage and his subsequent arrest, and then asks us to testify not only of the disturbing details of his brutalization, but also of the interconnection of family history, political persuasion, and love. which eventually landed him in that “interrogation room” in the first place. Despite a translation that struggles to convey the toughness and lyricism of Andras’ prose, the intensity of both Iveton’s principles and the political moment in which he is involved still succeeds. As he alternates between past and present, Andras allows multiple voices on the same page – even in the same sense – and sketches the landscape of politics and emotions that sealed Iveton’s fate. According to Andras’ narrative, it is Iveton alone who seems convinced that ‘barbarism cannot be beaten by emulation’, that ‘blood is no answer to blood’.
“I love France, I love France very much, I love France very much, but I have no love for colonialists,” Iveton told the presiding judge in the middle of his trial. It was an impossible position to occupy in the French imperial world of the mid-1950s. There was no France without its colonies. If Iveton were only striving for a future for Algeria, France would ‘recognize all its children, wherever they come from’, as Andras puts it, the improbability of the humanist dream is made equally clear. This moment in history had no room for the idealism that animated Iveton or others like him. The treacherous poison of political cynicism hid the community and forgiveness during the Cold War.
The year 2022 will mark the 60th anniversary of Algeria’s war of independence, and France has begun preparing the necessary settlement rituals. In January, French historian Benjamin Stora submitted a 147-page report on the progress made by France in commemorating the colonization of Algeria and the Algerian war to President Emmanuel Macron, a report commissioned by Macron has to show that he ‘was willing to promote reconciliation between the French and the Algerian people. “Macron has made it clear that although ‘recognition’ of this gruesome history is on the table, ‘remorse is out of the question.’ Although the report appears to be a step forward in reconciling the French postcolonial present with its troublesome colonial past, it will most likely fall short of true reconciliation for those who survived that past or who continue to be haunted by its ghosts. “Tomorrow they will not dare to kill us” insists on deceiving the finest details of history’s scandal, suggesting – convincingly – that certain truths can best be revealed in fiction.