HENRI ALLEG'S book on his experiences in Algeria needs no
introduction: it has been widely reviewed and discussed in the press here, mainly as a result of the French Government's grotesque actions in first, though not banning it, confis- cating newspapers which quoted from it; and then eventually banning it only after 60,000 copies had been sold. It has now been translated and published by John Calder (12s. 6d.), the banned preface by Sartre being included. I cannot attach much importance to the book itself; the difficulty is not so much in believing that the tortures M. Alleg relates happen in Algeria—it is abundantly obvious that they do—as in believing anything that any Communist propagandist writes, any- where. My own impression from reading The Question, I must admit, is that if the tortures hadn't happened to M. Alleg he would have had little trouble in inventing them. But the im- portant thing is not the author's veracity; it is the general picture of the pointless, casual and malig- nant character of French rule in Algeria and, even more obviously, of the futility of French govern- ments' policy of censorship and suppression at home,
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