The Earthquake

One afternoon, Shaykh Abdelmajid Boularwah embarks upon a journey from Algiers to Constantine in search of lost relatives who might help him defraud the new socialist government in its attempt to implement land reform. Through a labyrinth of back alleys and past memories, Boularwah makes his way across the seven bridges of Constantine, battling the forces of a rapidly changing society while confronting the demons of his own horrific past. The sequence of his recollections and his bizarre internal monologues construct a biographical narrative of modern Algeria from a consistently adversarial and surrealistic point of view, told by the defiantly proud scion of a family of ruthless landowners, swindlers traitors and collaborators with colonial...