Memmi’s seminal work on colonialism has been published in English at least three times since Greenfeld’s translation first appeared in 1957. Yet a contemporary translation would have muddied the water, for this edition is already the work of many hands across many years: Memmi’s 1965 preface is followed by Sartre’s foreword in its 1957 translation by Lawrence Hoey, and is joined by Nadine Gordimer’s 2003 introduction. Each brings a layer of understanding that is of its own era. Each essay – like the highly structured and thought-provoking text itself – is contentious, and in places portentous. Flawed, dated and infuriating in places, it is both “relevant and necessary” today, as its publisher contends, essential in the disillusioned aftermath of the Arab Spring.
