Between Sea and Sahara offers a portrait of Algeria as it entered the third decade of progressive European colonization, as depicted by a sympathetic and sensitive colonizer. We feel the ambition and energy tinged with arrogance and malaise on the French side; the societal erosion, strength, and canny resistance on the Algerian side. Written by the accomplished painter and writer Eugene Fromentin in the early 1850s, this work is part journal, part travelogue, part fiction, presenting a realistic tableau of Algeria and its people. He questions the French role there and his own goals; he offers different ways to interpret the non-Western world on canvas; he offers telling insights into his own development as painter, writer, and human being.

Eugene Fromentin (1820-1876) was a master in two arts. Especially known for his paintings of North Africa, he was the author of two travel books on the region. He also wrote a novel and a work on Flemish and Dutch painting. Both Flaubert and George Sand thought highly of him as a writer.