A French novel revisits the Rue d'Isly massacre in Algeria

Coinciding with the 72nd anniversary of the Algerian War of Independence, a French magazine highlighted the novel "Halte au feu" by author Stéphane Giusti, which focuses on the massacre on Rue d'Isly in Algiers on March 26, 1962. Eight days after the Evian Accords, French soldiers fired upon protesters opposing Algerian independence, killing 49 people and injuring around 200. The book uses the intersecting lives of six characters to capture the tense atmosphere of the final colonial days and the destructive role of the OAS paramilitary organization. The novel, which won the 2026 historical fiction award at the 'Rendez-vous de l'Histoire de Blois', serves to reopen sensitive chapters of colonial memory and demonstrates that the end of French colonial rule was marked by continued bloodshed rather than an immediate transition to peace.