Sage Goellner’s book offers a new approach to literature sometimes dismissed as ‘exoticist’ or otherwise of secondary importance: the travel writing and fiction that represented North Africa to nineteenth-century French readers.

Oxford Journals

This book is recommended reading for those interested in colonial or nineteenth-century studies.

The French Review

Attentive to the disturbing historical traces of colonial Algeria found in French Orientalist texts, Sage Goellner makes a compelling case for a re-evaluation of these nineteenth-century narratives and their testimony to the haunting violence and trauma of French colonialism. She demonstrates skillfully how these works continue to haunt our contemporary landscape and inform the memories and relations between France and Algeria.

Michael O'Riley, The Colorado College