State for Algerian affairs and numerous military officers were stymied in their efforts to protect them. It is a shameful story. Alain Gabon discusses Kassovitz’s films Métisse and La Haine, in a nobly-intended, well-informed, and poorly-written essay. Kassovitz used unknown Jewish and “minority” actors to show that metropolitan France was no longer primarily European in ethnicity. In Part III, “Writing Algerian Identities,” Robert Aldrich discusses Jean Sénac, a pied-noir supporter of Algerian independence who was murdered in 1973. Agar Mendousse offers a capable if predictable feminist reading of several works by Leïla Sebbar. Mary McCullough characterizes Sebbar in more original ways, as a writer who considers herself not a beur, but as a French Magic Realist. She revealingly analyzes Sebbar’s style, its effects, and its intentions. Part IV treats identity issues affecting North African Jews. Sarah Sussman explains how, unlike the Ashkenazi who for centuries had shaped Jewish identity in France, Sephardic groups came from several distinct backgrounds. Despite the Crémieux Decree of 1870 that granted them full French citizenship, they preserved ties with their Muslim neighbors, and were not guaranteed acceptance by the European community. Johann Sadock specifies that “Oriental” (Middle Eastern) Jews see themselves as having French nationality but Arab ethnicity. Brigitte Weltman-Aron surveys three outstanding Maghrebi Jewish writers: Memmi, Cixous, and Derrida. In Part V, Antony Johae surveys the novels of Amin Maalouf, a Lebanese who immigrated to France in 1976 as civil war erupted. He considers himself to belong to both countries. Joseph Militello compares the Senegalese WarnerVieyra ’s Juletane and Bâ’s Un Chant écarlate. There is much plot summary, and the further comparison with Jean Rhys’s The Wide Sargasso Sea seems adventitious. George Van Den Abbeele’s general discussion of Viêt-Kiêu (expatriate) literature is thoughtful and well-informed. Ali Yédes provides an original, informative examination of opposition to traditional Confucian misogyny in Ly Thu-Ho, Nguyen Du, and Pham Van Ky, contrasting the separatism of Confucian communities with assimilationist Buddhist philosophy. Finally, Part VI, “Postmodern Sites and Identities,” Habiba Deming’s excellent critique explains how Francophone studies have ineffectually applied Western feminist models to non-Western patriarchal societies, producing reductive , programmatic essays that demonstrate little knowledge of or concern for Muslim women. David Prochaska analyzes the series of photographic selfportraits of Yasmina Bouziane, a Moroccan now based in New York City, as a post-modernist pastiche whose masquerades mock conventional Francophone Orientalism. And David G. Troyansky traces how a dying Occitan language and culture in Limoges became militant starting around 1984, transforming a provincial city into “a transnational space” (425). In short, there is something to interest nearly anyone in Francophone studies. Michigan State University Laurence M. Porter SPICER, KEITH. Paris Passions: Watching the French Being Brilliant and Bizarre. Charleston, SC: BookSurge, 2008. ISBN 978-1-4392-1392-6. Pp. vi + 332. $16.99. This work’s playful title and cover photo of street musicians give the misleading impression that the reader can expect a light-hearted tour of the charms Reviews 185 of contemporary France. Long-term Canadian expatriate Keith Spicer has written seventy-two mini-essays which are sometimes irreverent and, given the title, surprisingly substantive. At heart, the work is an analysis, opinionated and unapologetic , of the successes and failings of modern French society. The tone of the work promises a quirky and informal view of life in France, beginning with a tour of the pleasures of Paris: upscale neighborhood shops, enchanting parks, and the delights of the cycle of seasons. The Luxembourg Garden “reminds everybody of student days—of history, freedom, folly, ambition, and the sweet torments of love” (83). The Place des Vosges is quintessential Paris, “a refuge where ordinary Parisians come to touch magic” (90). The Champs-Elysées, a stage for grand events, is now home to many shady businesses, “a touch of crass with its class” (99). In Spicer’s sixth arrondissement, where Catherine Deneuve also chooses to live, one can visit “ground-zero of philosophical and literary posturing, SaintGermain -des-Prés” (85), where Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir “smoked cigarettes and cynicism” (115) in an earlier...