This essay proposes to examine the influence of James Baldwin on the novels of Nabile Fares, especially those published at the beginning of the 1970s: Un passager de l'Occident (1971) and Le Champs des oliviers. Decouverte du monde (1972). The essay specifically highlights the inspiration that Fares found in Baldwin's works as he was living his own exile in Paris. This inspiration, acquired when Fares met Baldwin in 1970, shaped the Algerian author's ideas on identity, otherness, alienation and marginalization. The perspective developed by Baldwin in France influenced his vision of the United States, a country he felt would never know real progress without acknowledging its "multiculturality"; in other words, its racial diversity. This diversity was a blatant fact at the heart of the identity of the United States that needed to be acknowledged by all Americans. Fares found in Baldwin's statements about racial mixing and multiculturality a strong resonance in his own feelings towards post-colonial Algeria. According to Fares, only when Algeria accepts its multiculturalism will the country be able to establish a modern and equitable nation for all the Algerian people. Baldwin's ideas echo as themes and points of reference expressed in Fares's two novels and are integral to his lifelong quest for a "new world".
