Camus left Algeria for mainland France, but Algeria never left him. As the anti-colonial rebellion took hold in the 1950s, his refusal to join the bien pensant call for independence was considered an act of treason by the French left. Even as terror struck Algiers, Camus was vainly urging a federal solution, with a place for French settlers. When he famously declared that “I believe in justice, but I will defend my mother before justice,” he was denounced as a colonial apologist. Nearly 40 years later, Mr Lenzini tracked down the Algerian former student who provoked that comment at a press conference. He now confesses that, at the time, he had read none of Camus's work, and was later “shocked” and humbled to come across the novelist's extensive reporting on Arab poverty.