Mouloud Feraoun, Le Fils du Pauvre/ The Poor Man’s Son : A retrospective March 15, 1962 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Algerian writer, Mouloud Feraoun. A member of Algeria’s “Generation of 1954,” (named for the year that marked the beginning of the Algerian War), Feraoun was killed by French colonial extremists three months before the end of the war. Two of Feraoun’s texts, Le Fils du Pauvre (1954) and La Terre et Le Sang (1953) have recently been translated into English, published by the University of Virginia Press. The Poor Man’s Son appeared in 2005, and Land and Blood in 2012. Hence, they are now accessible to university students who do not read French. Significantly, The Poor Man’s Son, is not the English language translation of Le Fils du Pauvre published by Editions du Seuil in 1954, but the translation of the original text published in 1950 at the author’s expense by Les Cahiers du Nouvel Humanisme. The 1954 text is an abridged and edited version of the earlier text; by concluding with the protagonist’s admission to Teacher’s training school, it praises the French colonial education system in Algeria. The earlier text, in contrast, ends on a far more critical note. My paper will compare and contrast the two texts in the attempt to judge whether the 1954 publication, with its “amputated” ending betrays Feraoun’s initial message and whether the English translation restores proper meaning to the text. At the same time, I will explore the tension that exists in both versions between the voice of the novelist, one that is deeply rooted within the community, and the voice of the anthropologist, the impersonal and objective voice that describes the customs, rituals, beliefs of the Berber community in a scientific manner. I am questioning whether the latter does not “orientalize” this community dwelling in Algeria’s hills in the period leading up to World War II, thereby making them appear exotic, if not primitive to Western readers. Here I test the hypothesis that the two versions, as they alternate, create a literary work that is more complex than it appears upon the first reading.