Modern urban terrorism began in Algiers, and one result of that development was France's creation of a monstrous, chaotic, military apparatus of torture to use any means necessary to dismantle the terrorist cells. Did torture succeed in Algiers because the paras were dealing with a small population in a cordoned-off area?
One wonders.
Morgan doesn't offer any real answers, but he does eventually reckon with his own act of torture -- and the ripple effects on a culture and a military that practice torture. "The Algerian experience did not enrich me," he writes. "It diminished me." This memoir is a prose map of the ruin of war, a love song for a ruined city and a damaged people, and an anthem to youth, sex and vigor.
War enriches no one. But Morgan's fine book will.
