“A limpid work, controversial interpretations; the OAS made no mistake in assassinating the man who spoke in the name of the humble”. This assessment by Christiane Chaulet Achour is a fitting description of Mouloud Feraoun's work. The last of his novels, La Cité des roses, is set in Algiers, as the Algerian war intensifies. It tells the story of the love affair between a young French schoolteacher and a Kabyle intellectual, thwarted by this war fanned by racism and the ultras. A metaphor for the irreconcilable relationship between two peoples, this story tells of the devastating effects of colonial domination by one over the other. The City of Roses had not been published in France until this one.