EF101 Bilingual Book Group: "The Wound" ("Des Hommes") by Laurent Mauvignier

Friday, 10 February

2:00 to 4:00 pm

FREE to WICE members

"The Wound" ("Des Hommes" en français) by Laurent Mauvignier

A step back in time to 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. 

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 on 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 on cru pouvoir le nier.

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