Introduction -- Thinking Politics and Aesthetics. Metaphor, Or, the Folding Thread between Aesthetics and Politics -- The Potentiality of the Utopic Imaginary in Postcolonial Fiction -- Reading Aesthetics and Politics. Walking the Tightrope between Memory and History: Metaphor in Tahar Djaout's L'invention du desert -- The Dreams of the Just: Allegorizing the Community of Brotherhood in Tahar Djaout's Les vigiles and Le dernier ete de la raison -- Paradises Lost But Not Regained: The Politics of Utopia and Dystopia in Rachid Mimouni's Le fleuve detourne and La malediction -- The Novel Secularism of Rachid Mimouni's L'honneur de la tribu -- Conclustion.