Shattered Vision (French Expressions)

From Algerian writer Belamri comes this harrowing novel, winner of the Prix France Culture, about a young Muslim boy who comes of age in the early 1960s, during the French occupation of Algeria. The focus of the story is Hassan's search to regain his nearly vanished sight, a quest that the author handles with grace, distinction and genuine understanding (Belamri himself has been blind since 1962, when he, like his protagonist, was 15). It's Hassan's mother who pushes for her son's cure, putting him through both Western and Eastern medical ordeals, including having him gruesomely bled from the nape of the neck like a lamb at slaughter. The novel's first half is filled with the murderous tit-for-tats of the French forces and the Algerian resistors and collaborators, each haphazardly shooting at the other as if Algeria were a playground on which they are playing at war. Further on, after Algeria wins its independence, despair turns to Panglossian idealism: ``Everybody will get well in independent Algeria,'' says a revolutionary, cradling his machine gun. ``When you have such a beautiful flag, you don't get sick.'' The country's postbellum honeymoon is short-lived, though-even as Hassan continues to struggle with the encroachment of total darkness until the novel's final, dramatic climax. (Oct.)