I and Hayim

First edition: 2018 publisher Dar Meskellani. It seems the Algerian novelist, Habib El Sayeh, in this novel, is preoccupied as much as possible, with the obsession of identity and deep national issues, which he shaped in a fictional world overflowing with the scent of Algeria during French colonization and after independence. Skillfully weaving, with a talented novelist's hand, the threads of a story that tightens your soul at times, as it details the atmosphere of war, colonial crimes, racial discrimination, and loss... and at other times, it lifts your spirits, carrying you through the emotions of love, friendship, nostalgia, religious tolerance, and love of homeland. Sometimes, opposing forces meet, and the heat of love is born from the womb of war and the coldness of snow! Between Saida, Camp, Oran, and Algiers, a journey filled with intertwined events, the hero is a young man followed by another like his shadow, reality and imagination, until the story is crowded with their presence and overflows into the title: I and Haim! Two young men who did not gamble with identity, despite the suffering and pain in the paths leading to it! Their story is followed by an unrelenting eye, from childhood until they reach maturity, when the destroyer of pleasures separates them. It is the narrator’s eye that moves smoothly between angles, covering, without harshness, a hot phase of Algerian history.