Environment shapes men, and none more so than the vast skies of Algeria — generally blazing down without pity or moderation, but capable of unpredictable, fierce change. Immense, beautiful, sudden, savage and harsh; one gropes inadequately for the right adjectives to describe the country. Distance never ceases to amaze; from Algiers to Tamanrasset in the barren, lunar mountains of the Hoggar is 1,300 miles, or roughly the same as from Newcastle to Algiers; from Algiers to Oran, a flea's hop on the map of North Africa, is little short of 300 miles by road. Four times as big as metropolitan France, with its land area unchanged since the colonial era, present-day Algeria is the tenth largest country in the world. Nine-tenths of it are comprised by the endless Saharan under-belly that sags below the Atlas mountains, the endless wasteland of blistering rock and shifting sand.

XREF: Echoes environmental determinism debates; connects to geopolitics reading on North Africa and colonial-era territorial persistence. QUESTION: How much does environment actually shape the political and cultural identity of Algerians versus historical contingencies?

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 137