Clamor

A gripping testimonial to the transnational solidarities forged across the decolonizing world in the 1950s and 60s from the rarely heard perspective of a child... CLAMOR offers, for the first time, an account of the colonial soundscape. For this child of the Algerian war, the practice of decolonization begins with his own decolonization of all the would-be empires of music and sound competing to dominate his city block. In his mind and soul, these disharmonies come to coexist and inform one another, and his continuous absorption of them culminates in his own lament for his mother’s death. This inaugural exercise of voice is not only the deepest expression of his grief, but also the future actor, journalist, and novelist’s first cry for survival. Through his close listening to all these voices, and, as a result, the development of his own voice, the child narrator empowers himself to choose not to become a murderer, to choose not to be overcome by the wartime violence surrounding him, but rather to sustain life through music and language.

—Olivia C. Harrison and Teresa Villa-Ignacio, from the translators’ afterword