Pierre Grenaud's apparent conclusion in his chapter 'Que penser de l'Ecole nord-africaine des lettres?' is that no significant literary community which could be classified as such existed in the French Algeria of the 1930s and 1940s. His analysis seems to indicate that during that era the contributions made to the literary world by French Algerian writers constituted only individual efforts intended to glorify France. It can be inferred from this that the immediate influences of the Algerian environment on the pied-noir writer counted for little in either the conception of his art or his identity as a writer The object of this thesis is to re-address the question of the literary significance of colonial French Algeria, as related to the literary group known as the Ecole d'Alger. In 1936 this group formed around the editor Edmond Charlot and the writer Albert Camus, and in 1945 was considered by the French writer and critic Gabriel Audisio to constitute a literary school. Associated with this school are the four writers of interest in this thesis: Emmanuel Robles, Jean Pelegri, Jules Roy, and Albert Camus This thesis demonstrates that the Ecole d'Alger holds a notable place in recent French literary history. An examination of the writers' nostalgic literature shows their identities as both French Algerians and French Algerian writers, and serves to affirm the existence of the Ecole d'Alger The introduction to the thesis addresses the broad issue of post-independence nostalgia for Algeria. Chapter one contains a brief history of colonial French Algeria and the Algerian War. Chapter two is an overview of French Algeria's non-indigenous literary history prior to the 1930s. Chapter three presents the social climate that produced the Ecole d'Alger, while chapter four presents the Ecole d'Alger in detail. Four subsequent chapters treating the writers' nostalgic literature on Algeria analyze autobiographical novels and memoirs. In conclusion it is seen that the role and image of Algeria in all of these works affirm the writers' love for, and identification with, Algeria, and affirm their status as members of a literary community distinctive in the history of French Algeria