Virtual Library

Ils ont été appelés en Algérie au moment des « événements », en 1960. Deux ans plus tard, Bernard, Rabut, Février et d’autres sont rentrés en France. Ils se sont tus, ils ont vécu leurs vies. Mais parfois, il suffit de presque rien, d’une journée d’anniversaire en hiver, d’un cadeau qui tient dans la poche, pour que, quarante ans après, le passé fasse irruption dans la vie de ceux qui ont cru pouvoir le nier.

"Where is your wound?" asks Jean Genet in the lines Laurent Mauvignier uses as an epigraph to The Wound. By the time we have finished this four-part novel, we realize that for many the wound lies four decades back in "the Events" that people have tried to not talk about ever since: the Algerian War.
Chronicling the lives of two cousins--Bernard and Rabut--both in the present and at the time of the Algerian War of Independence in the 1960s, we get a full picture of the lasting effects this event had on the men who were involved. Through the fragments of their stories we see the whole history of the war: its atrocities, its horrors, and its hatreds. Mauvignier shows readers how the Algerian War, always present yet always repressed, has sickened the emotional and moral life of everyone it touched--and France itself, perhaps. The epigraph, like the novel, suggests that wounded men may even become the wound itself.

In 1988 Patrick Modiano stumbled across an ad between the stock market report and a story of a school visit to Marechal Petain in the personal columns of Paris Soir from December 31, 1941: "We are looking for a young girl, Dora Bruder, 15 years old, five feet tall, round face, gray-brown eyes, gray sportscoat, burgundy pullover, navy blue hat and skirt, brown athletic shoes. Send all information to Mr. and Mrs. Bruder, 41, Boulevard Ornano, Paris."
Placed by the parents of a 15-year-old Jewish girl who had run away from her convent school just before New Year's Eve, this ad set Modiano on a quest to find out everything he could about Dora Bruder and why she ran away from the Catholic boarding school that had been hiding her. He found only one other official mention of her name: on a list of Jews deported from Paris to Auschwitz in September 1942.
With no knowledge of Dora Bruder aside from these two records of disappearances, Modiano continued to dig for fragments from Dora's past. What little he found in official records or through remaining family members, Modiano transforms into a meditation on the immense losses of the period--lost people, lost stories, and lost history. As he tries to find connections to Dora, Modiano delivers a moving account of the ten-year investigation that took him back to the sights and sounds of Paris under the Occupation and the paranoia of the Petain regime. In his efforts to exhume her from the past, Modiano realizes that he must come to terms with the specters of his own troubled adolescence. The result is a montage of creative and historical material that unfolds as a moving rumination on loss

Il a fallu deux ans à Maïssa Bey pour traduire en mots cette part muette de sa vie : son père mort sous la torture en 1957 pendant la guerre d’Indépendance, alors qu’elle avait sept ans. Son récit est splendide dans sa sobriété, la force de son évocation et l’absence inouïe de haine. Une leçon magistrale, qui l’a confirmée dans son rôle d’écrivain tout en mettant en avant son souci constant d’humanité.

This new translation brings together two of Algerian author Maïssa Bey's important works for the first time in English. "Do You Hear in the Mountains..." is a compelling piece of autofiction in which three destinies meet dramatically on a train moving through France. We meet an Algerian refugee, whom we recognize as Bey herself. She has escaped the civil war and cannot forget her father's commitment to independence nor his death under the torture of the French soldiers. Sitting near her is a retired doctor whose military service in Algeria coincidentally took him to the same area at the time of that tragedy. Their neighbor is a girl who would like to understand this past that is so painful to discuss. The eleven diverse tales that follow, presented under the title "Under the Jasmin, at Night," exemplify some of Bey's recurring themes--the Franco-Algerian colonial legacy and the feminine condition. Together, these works provide an unforgettable picture of a turbulent history that reaches across generations and continents.

Quatre jours de plus, et Mouloud Feraoun aurait connu l'Algérie indépendante. Il a été assassiné par l'OAS le 15 mars 1962. Son Journal, écrit durant la guerre, rend compte de ses espoirs, de sa tristesse et de ses doutes quotidiens. De l'insurrection des fellaghas à l'oppression du peuple algérien, l'écrivain se fait un devoir de témoigner des événements de son pays. Né en 1913 à Tizi Hibel, Mouloud Feraoun a été instituteur et directeur d'école en Algérie avant de devenir inspecteur des Centres sociaux. Il est notamment l'auteur de Le Fils du pauvre et LaTerre et le Sang (Prix populiste 1953). Mouloud Feraoun est mort assassiné en 1962 à Alger.

“This honest man, this good man, this man who never did wrong to anyone, who devoted his life to the public good, and who was one of the greatest writers in Algeria, has been murdered. . . . Not by accident, not by mistake, but called by his name and killed with preference.” So wrote Germaine Tillion in Le Monde shortly after Mouloud Feraoun’s assassination by a right wing French terrorist group, the Organisation Armée Secrète, just three days before the official cease-fire ended Algeria’s eight-year battle for independence from France. However, not even the gunmen of the OAS could prevent Feraoun’s journal from being published. Journal, 1955–1962 appeared posthumously in French in 1962 and remains the single most important account of everyday life in Algeria during decolonization. Feraoun was one of Algeria’s leading writers. He was a friend of Albert Camus, Emmanuel Roblès, Pierre Bourdieu, and other French and North African intellectuals. A committed teacher, he had dedicated his life to preparing Algeria’s youth for a better future. As a Muslim and Kabyle writer, his reflections on the war in Algeria afford penetrating insights into the nuances of Algerian nationalism, as well as into complex aspects of intellectual, colonial, and national identity. Feraoun’s Journal captures the heartbreak of a writer profoundly aware of the social and political turmoil of the time. This classic account, now available in English, should be read by anyone interested in the history of European colonialism and the tragedies of contemporary Algeria.

In La Disparition, the l’OuLiPo author, Georges Perec writes an entire novel without using the letter “e.” The constraint Perec sets himself is built off the equation whereby the disappearance of the letter “e” equals the disappearance of “eux [them],” referring to his parents who disappeared in Auschwitz. The novel in turn is dedicated to “eux.” La Disparition itself tells the story of Anton Voyl, a man who himself has disappeared and left behind him a trail of mysterious notes. 

«Cette femme aux pieds nus qui donne le titre à mon livre, c'est ma mère, Stefania. Lorsque nous étions enfants, au Rwanda, mes sœurs et moi, maman nous répétait souvent : "Quand je mourrai, surtout recouvrez mon corps avec mon pagne, personne ne doit voir le corps d'une mère." Ma mère a été assassinée, comme tous les Tutsi de Nyamata, en avril 1994 ; je n'ai pu recouvrir son corps, ses restes ont disparu. Ce livre est le linceul dont je n'ai pu parer ma mère. C'est aussi le bonheur déchirant de la faire revivre, elle qui, jusqu'au bout traquée, voulut nous sauver en déjouant pour nous la sanglante terreur du quotidien. C'est, au seuil de l'horrible génocide, son histoire, c'est notre histoire.»

On July 16, 1942, little Annette Muller was nine years old. After having survived the hell that was the Velodrome d’Hiver, she was interned with her mother and younger brother, Michel at Beaune-la-Rolande. She witnessed the terrible fate of the thousands of young Jewish children interned in the Loiret camps who were cruelly separated from their mothers, then sent to Auschwitz -- from which none of them would return.

Annette escaped deportations thanks to her father who succeeded in securing her and her brother’s release from Drancy. She was one of the rare few children to have survived the Velodrome d’Hiver. 

From the Vel d’Hiv to the camps of  Beaune-la-Rolande camp and Drancy to the Lamarck refuge to the Catholic orphanage where she was hidden to the children’s home in Mans, she has never been able to forget. She finally decided to tell her story; she returns the perspective of the child that she was, as if those moments never settled in the past.

Paris, 17 octobre 1961. La fin de la guerre d'Algérie est proche. En réponse au couvre-feu imposé aux Algériens par Maurice Papon, alors préfet de police, le FLN organise à Paris une manifestation pacifi que. La police charge : violences, arrestations massives, matraquages, meurtres, Algériens jetés dans la Seine. Nanterre, 1996. Amel a seize ans. Elle entend parfois sa mère et sa grand-mère discuter de choses graves dans une langue, l'arabe, qu'elle comprend mal. Quand elle pose des questions, les femmes se dérobent. Avec Omer, journaliste algérien réfugié, et grâce au film documentaire de Louis, fils d'une Française ayant adopté la cause algérienne, elle cherche à comprendre. Roman polyphonique dense, essentiel, poignant, La Seine était rouge lève le voile de l'oubli sur l'une des pages les plus douloureuses de l'histoire de la France contemporaine. Née à Aflou, en Algérie, d'un père algérien et d'une mère française, Leïla Sebbar vit aujourd'hui à Paris. Romancière et nouvelliste, elle est l'auteur d'un grand nombre de livres parmi lesquels la trilogie de Shérazade (Stock), Je ne parle pas la langue de mon père (Julliard), Les Femmes au bain (Bleu autour), Le Peintre et son modèle (Al Manar-Alain Gorius), Le Ravin de la femme sauvage (Thierry Magnier), Mon cher fils (Elyzad).

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.

Born in Sighet, Transylvania, Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were taken from their home in 1944 and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and then to Buchenwald. Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel's memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. 

De 1954 à 1962, plus d’un million et demi de jeunes Français sont partis faire leur service militaire en Algérie. Mais ils ont été plongés dans une guerre qui ne disait pas son nom. Depuis lors, les anciens d’Algérie sont réputés n’avoir pas parlé de leur expérience au sein de leur famille. Le silence continuerait à hanter ces hommes et leurs proches. En historienne, Raphaëlle Branche a voulu mettre cette vision à l’épreuve des décennies écoulées depuis le conflit. Fondé sur une vaste collecte de témoignages et sur des sources inédites, ce livre remonte d’abord à la guerre elle-même : ces jeunes ont-ils pu dire à leur famille ce qu’ils vivaient en Algérie ? Ce qui s’est noué alors, montre Raphaëlle Branche, conditionne largement ce qui sera transmis plus tard. Son enquête suit ensuite les métamorphoses des silences et des récits jusqu’à nos jours. Elle pointe l’importance des bouleversements qu’a connus la société française et leurs effets sur ce qui pouvait être dit, entendu et demandé dans les familles à propos de la guerre d’Algérie. Elle éclaire en particulier pourquoi, six décennies après la fin du conflit, beaucoup d’enfants ont toujours la conviction qu’existe chez leur père une zone sensible à ne pas toucher. Grâce à cette enquête, c’est plus largement la place de la guerre d’Algérie dans la société française qui se trouve éclairée : si des silences sont avérés, leurs causes sont moins personnelles que familiales, sociales et, ultimement, liées aux contextes historiques des dernières décennies. Avec le temps, elles se sont modifiées et de nouveaux récits sont devenus possibles.