Algerian War Series

Jean Lartéguy’s Algerian War series follows a group of fictional French paratroopers whose experience of defeat, captivity and counterinsurgency hardens into political estrangement from the civilian state. The Centurions begins with the collapse of the French position in Indochina, follows the soldiers home and through the Suez Crisis, then sends them into the Algerian War, where revolutionary warfare changes their ideas about tactics, loyalty and acceptable force.

The Praetorians continues the same military world into the political crisis of 1958. As officers face scrutiny over counterinsurgency methods and fear another strategic defeat, professional solidarity crosses into political intervention and the return of Charles de Gaulle. Taken together, the two novels examine decolonisation, asymmetric war, torture, military identity and the danger created when soldiers come to believe that they, rather than elected governments, must decide the nation’s interests.