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Book Review: "Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us" by Joseph Andras

5/5 - Is fighting back worth it?

By Annie KapurPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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“Tomorrow They Won’t Dare to Murder Us” is a book about morality and how we begin to question it in situations of extreme danger. When a terrorist attack is being planned by Algerians upon France, there is a certain expectation that we must detest them and we must condone the safety of the public. When the Algerians state that nobody must die then not only do we begin to question our morality but we also begin to question their motives. In this book, we see exactly what horrors these people have endured their more violent neighbours of the French. We see exactly how the Algerians are constantly treated as the outsiders despite being able to speak French and live as the French do. We see exactly the price that is paid for being different in even the slightest of ways. Within the book there are these moments of brutality in which we see people come together against adversity and yet, be punished differently based on who they are and where they are from. It is an absolutely gut-wrenching book for the most part because of the way in which we see certain characters go through intense amounts of pain.

The book is written incredibly well in terms of what we get to see. There is nothing in the novel that seems out of place, out of touch or even out of time. The characters and their stories develop during the police’s torturing of the suspect. The ideas surrounding the torture include themes not only concerning morality but also concerning life and death. We have the subject (who I will not name since it would be a spoiler and we both know that there are no spoilers in my reviews, ever) contemplating life and death, whether he was simply born wrong or whether he had deferred from the path in life. We have the various blames that are placed upon the subject and yet, we have this strange and polarising love in which two characters are loving each other through the turmoil. I think the best thing about this book that not only do we have the characters’ worlds falling apart but we have that slight bit of redemption within the fact that we also have characters in love, characters remembering past love and characters falling in and out of love in the midst of other characters or themselves being tortured and beaten half to death by the police.

The writing style changes over the course of the book. At the beginning, we have an immediate sense of urgency and as the book goes on, the pace slows a little, becoming almost rhythmic in its pace. I love the fact that the book changes pace at these moments of beating and physical abuse as the slowing of it creates this elongated scene in which the reader would definitely think about the character being subjected to this more than anything else.

In conclusion, though this book is short, there is a definite classic quality about it that also resonates with our modern day in terms of police brutality. I think that there are numerous qualities about this book that need to be thought about in our century in terms of why we treat people differently from ourselves and how we handle the issues concerning the power that runs to the head of the members of police. The idea of systematic and institutional racism, classism and sexism is rampant in this book and it is only justified by the attempt to retaliate against years of fighting the same battle over and over again.

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About the Creator

Annie Kapur

190K+ Reads on Vocal.

English Lecturer

🎓Literature & Writing (B.A)

🎓Film & Writing (M.A)

🎓Secondary English Education (PgDipEd)

📍Birmingham, UK

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