This searing historical fiction immerses us in the brutal early days of the 19th-century French colonization of Algeria. The highly anticipated English-language debut of a prize-winning author who tackles the taboo of France’s colonial past. In search of a prosperous life, Séraphine and her family brave the dangerous journey to France’s newly conquered Algerian territory, along with five hundred likeminded citizens. But the realities of the colony soon give the lie to the French government’s promises: inadequate shelter, hostile weather, sickness, and a native population whose anger and desperation threaten to boil over into violence. As the settlers gradually, painfully establish a community and a church in this foreign land, the French army wreaks devastation on the Algerian people and their villages. Through the eyes of a soldier—constantly reminded by his captain, “You’re no angels!”—we witness their shocking cruelty as they attempt to quell resistance. With chiseled, haunting prose reminiscent of Faulkner, Mathieu Belezi condenses years of historical research into a powerfully human account. Attacking Earth and Sun vividly exposes the hell that was colonization, far from the pioneer dream sold by Western powers. “Belezi’s scathing English-language debut depicts the early-19th-century colonization of Algeria as a Boschian tableau of arrogance and atrocity…this mesmerizes with its righteous and often poetic anger.” — Publishers Weekly “Mathieu Belezi doesn’t pull any punches: he puts forth his vision of French colonization in Algeria.” —Leïla Slimani, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Nanny “[Belezi] captures the racism that underpinned colonization and the greed that led to land expropriation, but also the doubts that gnawed at settlers who fled France to escape poverty.” — New York Times “Belezi prods this dark period of French history with care, prompting questions about how France will choose to teach its children about Algeria and how other colonial powers can reconcile their own pasts with the consequences they still live with.” — Chicago Review of Books “[A] magnetic novel, with an impressive rhythmic power.” — Le Monde Mathieu Belezi is the author of more than a dozen novels. His writing career began with Le petit roi , which won the Marguerite-Audoux Prize in 1999. His novel Attacking Earth and Sun has won the Prix Livre Inter and Le Monde Literary Prize. Having traveled widely and even taught in Louisiana, he now divides his time between France and Italy. Lara Vergnaud is a translator of prose, creative nonfiction, and scholarly works from the French. She is the recipient of two PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants and a French Voices Grand Prize, and has been nominated for the National Translation Award. She lives in France. (HANDS OF TOIL) I wept I couldn’t help but weep when we arrived and saw the land that would need working holy Mary mother of God days and days of travel, along the Seine and the Saône, and then the Rhône on boats flat as the palm of your hand and drawn by horses that took their sweet time, believe you me, while at every lock the men raced to the inns to gorge themselves on food and wine as we poor women used the pause to wash the linens not to mention the children, days and days I’m telling you, until at last we could make out the sea, the sea and its dazzling light that beckoned like a beacon over the port of Marseille holy Mary mother of God then they crammed us and all the other wide-eyed migrants in a lazaretto, we were a good five hundred in there, five hundred with eyes peeled for the frigate Labrador , which wasn’t in port and wouldn’t be for a good week, five hundred quelling our impatience by strolling the city streets, five hundred seated on café terraces with the mistral at our backs or pressing our noses against novelty shop windows, until it was announced that the boat had arrived and we could board with our trunks and hodgepodge of furniture and household necessities holy Mary mother of God days and nights on that Labrador pitching like a cockleshell as we clutched our stomachs and emptied our guts before finally setting two feet on Algerian soil and listening to an army commander’s fine words “Rest assured, all you brave men and women gathered here, that the government of the Republic of France will watch over you like a father over his children. Day and night, on any occasion, we will be here to give you a hand. Whatever may come, never lose faith in your government, in your republic. Our eyes are wide open and our ears are pricked for any grievance you may voice. We will do everything in our power—everything, mind you!—to ensure that your hands of toil are fairly compensated. For you are the strength and intelligence France requires in these barbaric lands, you are its new bubbling blood. And nothing could be more precious” fine, moving words duly followed by drumrolls and applause “Vive la France! Vive la