Abstract
During the Cold War, decolonization gave rise to many new countries that struggled to define their place in the East-West confrontation. This was an especially urgent task for intellectuals who identified with new states. One such intellectual was Kateb Yacine, whose quest to look ahead was impaired by his revulsion at the postcolonial leaders of his native Algeria. His search for a secular national model found its object in Ho Chi Minh and the Communist-ruled Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Kateb's embrace of an imaginary Ho Chi Minh and a rose-colored model of the Democratic of Vietnam was particularly driven by his tortured relationship with France, the colonial master of both Algeria and Vietnam. Kateb detested the Islamic pan-Arabism of postcolonial Algeria and escaped to France and the Francophone world, where he discovered the revolutionary secularism of Ho Chi Minh and the anti-colonial stance of the Vietnamese, which he admired. Kateb used poetry, novels, and theater to express his admiration of Ho Chi Minh and Communist tyrants in the Soviet Union and China, revealing how Cold War cultural products could take many forms.