Dead Man's Share by Yasmina Khadra

Superintendent Brahim Llob is bored. Nothing seems to need his attention in an unusually quiet Algiers. Then suddenly peace is shattered in ways Llob could never have imagined. His subordinate, Lieutenant Lino, falls for an entirely unsuitable woman, and is devastated when she returns to a previous lover, the wealthy and influential Haj Thobane. Thobane survives an attempted murder that kills his chauffeur and Lino's gun is found at the scene. With Lino in prison, it is up to Llob to face down the corrupt echelons of the Algerian government to find the truth about what happened the night of the murder. The search will take the world-weary Llob down avenues even he has never encountered and will force him to delve into his beloved country's brutal past.

Translated by Aubrey Botsford from the original French.



About the Author

YASMINA KHADRA is the pseudonym of the Algerian author Mohammed Moulessehoul, who was born in 1956. A high ranking officer in the Algerian army, he went into exile in France in 2000, where he now lives in seclusion. In his several writings on the civil war in Algeria, Khadra exposes the current regime and the fundamentalist opposition as the joint guilty parties in the Algerian Tragedy. Before his admission of identity in 2001, a leading critic in France wrote: "A he or a she? It doesn't matter. What matters is that Yasmina Khadra is today one of Algeria's most important writers."

Read an article on Algeria by Janine di Giovanni