The Colonizer and the Colonized was written by Albert Memmi in 1957, when North African national independence movements were gaining momentum. In his analysis of the colonial relationship, Memmi depicts colonialism as a disease of the European in need of a cure, but he also makes the crucial argument that colonialism destroys both the colonizer and the colonized and in the end both are ruined.
For all its horrors of the past, colonialism today is impoverished, something which Memmi already began to understand almost a half century ago. Nevertheless, the colonizers of today, with the Americans leading the pack, are still relying on the same brutal methods developed by their predecessors, mainly the British and the French, and are no less racist, greedy and destructive.
While the age of colonialism has been waning for several decades, its effects remain virulent, and at the same time there are recent attempts to reinvigorate colonialism through various itnernational protocols and global economic agencies. Memmi's groundbreaking work, therefore, remains relevant and essential today.