Louis Bertrand (20 March 1866 in Spincourt, Meuse – 6 December 1941 in Cap d'Antibes) was a French novelist, historian and essayist. He was the third member elected to occupy seat 4 of the Académie française in 1925. Bertrand encouraged the Jewish-Algerian writer Elissa Rhaïs to first publish her work.

Biography

Bertrand was born in France and later moved to Algiers. His first novel Le sang des races (1899) explored this complex identity. It's considered a precursor of Algérianisme, a concept of Algerian literature exploring the discrete Algerian identity of settlers laying claim to an authentic existence in Algeria independent of France itself. Bertrand's work notably "valorizes the colony and its European inhabitants", as Seth Graebner put it "not the palm trees, camels or other exotic backdrops (and certainly not Arabs) but instead the new farms, cities, roads, ports and the Europeans building them." Some have described it as "echoes of a fascist discourse".

Work

Studies of Louis Bertrand