Germaine Tillion, renowned French ethnologist of the Aures region in Algeria, Resistance member, deportee and human rights advocate, returns to Algeria to document the living conditions of Algerians as the violence of the French Algerian war escalates. Tillion was horrified by the deteriorization that had occurred in the fifteen years of her absence and in Algeria: the realities she sets about documenting the factors that she believed led to the pauperization of the Algerian people in French colonial Algeria as well as outlining a solution. In Algeria: the realities Tillion argues that France was obligated to end the poverty and illiteracy amongst Algerian people and that the economic assistance and provision of education needed to bring this about would be no more costly to France than the price of the war.