An investigation into the legacy of France's years of occupation
As a child in the 1960s, Adam Nossiter grew up in a France that was desperate to believe in its innocence in the Second World War. Collaboration with the crimes of the Nazi regime was a subject never dwelt on, or fiercely denied, until years later. The Algeria Hotel is Nossiter's story of coming to terms with this hidden history in the 1990s, as he travelled to France looking for evidence of how people lived - and still live - with the damage done in those years. The result is a searching and disturbing narrative of today's France as it emerges from the shadow of the war and its crimes, and also a far-reaching revelation of deep truths about how we remember and why we forget.
Adam Nossiter grew up in France and England and now lives in New Orleans. He was formerly a reporter for the New York Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has also written Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers.