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Cargando... The Seine was Red: Paris, October 1961por Leïla Sebbar
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Mildred Mortimer's introduction to this novel calls it an anamnesis...a memory. It's a perfect term since, despite the fictional nature of the plot, the story serves to establish a communal recollection of October 17, 1961 when Parisian police killed perhaps as many as 200 peacefully-demonstrating Algerians, many of whose bodies were hurled into the Seine. Notwithstanding the enormity of the event, the government remained close-lipped about it and the press largely declined to cover it. Amel is a young French woman of Algerian descent. She knows that her grandparents were imprisoned by the French for dissidence but they have always declined to tell her what happened. When she finally learns the truth from a documentary file produced by a friend, she and an Algerian acquaintance, Omer, take a tour through Paris, visiting the sites that figured both in the events of that day and the Algerian war for independence in general. The story draws explicit parallels between the actions of Algerian citizens reacting to the de Gaulle administration’s oppressions, and French citizens reacting to those of the Nazi administration. For example, in an attempt to materialize memory, Omer uses graffiti to extend the plaques on monuments, memorializing the Algerian protestors alongside the memories of the French protestors. Sebbar accomplishes her objective, illuminating an event that should never have been hidden. It is not an easy task to get through it, however. Sebbar’s style is deliberately opaque. People speak in fragments. Conversations are jammed together without benefit of paragraphs or any direct indication of who is speaking. One must read closely and then re-read in order to be certain who is expressing which thought. I couldn’t find any particular meaning in this choice and it struck me as unnecessary. In the final balance, this is a book worth trying if you are interested in Algeria or the backdrop of French colonial history, but I wish she had made it slightly more accessible.
The official French obfuscation of the police violence against Algerians in Paris in October 1961 has inspired long-term personal and collective memory retrieval that has taken many forms, and cultural vectors have long played a fascinating role in this complex process. The work of Franco-Algerian novelist and essayist Leïla Sebbar has for many years provided an eloquent expression and examination of the Franco-Algerian encounter, and, in particular, of the generational factors within Algerian migration in France. This novel, initially published in 1996 as La Seine était rouge and reviewed here in Mildred Mortimer’s excellent translated version, thus constitutes a continuation of Sebbar’s earlier work. Sebbar’s short but very dense novel constitutes probably the most eloquent example of the sub-genre of novels concerning 17 October 1961. The text addresses a number of difficult and sensitive issues. For the novel is not only about the need to cultivate memory of October 1961 as a counter-memory to the Republican versions of the past commemorated highly selectively on the walls and through the statues of the former colonial “centre”: Sebbar’s novel is also about strategic silence at personal and collective levels, and how such silence is created, and perpetuated. The difficult questions raised by the novel are therefore not only asked of the Republican state, but also addressed to the central characters, none of whom represent official French (or Algerian) viewpoints, but all of whom are struggling with the past and how it can be assessed, and indeed re-assessed, in the light of the present.
Leïla Sebbar's novel recounts an event in French history that has been hidden for many years. Toward the end of the Algerian war, the FLN, an Algerian nationalist party, organized a demonstration in Paris to oppose a curfew imposed upon Algerians in France. About 30,000 Algerians gathered peacefully, but the protest was brutally suppressed by the Paris police. Between 50 and 200 Algerians were killed and their bodies were thrown into the Seine. This incident provides the background for a more intimate look into the history of violence between France and Algeria. Following three young protagonists--one French, one Algerian, and one French national of Algerian descent--Sebbar takes readers on a journey of discovery and comprehension. Mildred Mortimer's impressive translation conveys the power of Sebbar's words in English and allows English-speaking readers an opportunity to understand the complex relationship between past and present, metropole and colony, immigrant and citizen, that lies at the heart of this acclaimed novel. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)843.914Literature French French fiction Modern Period 20th Century 1945-1999Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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My full review is in issue 10 of Belletrista: http://www.belletrista.com/2011/Issue10/reviews_15.php ( )