Freedom & Captivity in Henri Alleg’s 1958 Resistance Text La Question

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In this Story Map project, we outline the circumstances surrounding the writing and publication of La Question, the 1958 text that French-Algerian journalist Henri Alleg wrote during his time in El-Biar, a French prison in Algeria, where he was brutally and inhumanely tortured by French paratroopers during the Franco-Algerian War. Our Story Map will start with the articles he wrote and published that led to his arrest and will follow his time in captivity, during which he wrote La Question. The Story Map will also show the French government’s attempt to censor his book after it was published. The book was quickly recognized internationally for its importance as a resistance text, for it detailed the unethical practices of the French government, police, and military at the time. In his work, Alleg describes everything he sees, everything he hears, and everything “les paras” (French paratroopers) do to extract information. He also describes his own thoughts and emotions, and he shows his determination to keep his will, though the paras try to take it from him. This constant interplay between freedom and captivity is a theme through the whole text, and our Story Map tells just that story.