My parents left Poland to ensure me a future, or the hope of a future, saving me from the discrimination and the stones thrown at me of which they themselves were occasionally victims or had witnessed when they were young.
I note that to choose the country of Intifadas in order to avoid stones being thrown is in itself a jewish joke.***
This was the last of the eleven books read this year for the Prix du Roman de Rochefort 2021, a short, quick and interesting read, a story of the Shoah and the next generation, the silence of the deported told as a mystery with enough dry humour in contrast to the original events and their sequels to explain the rationalistion of the next generation as illustrated in the opening quote of the narrators parents deciding to leave Poland for Israel.
So when she can no longer ignore the presence of the spirit of her dead sister, a dibbouk, she is persuaded to consult a woman who tells her of this phenomenon and who eventually traces a person living in Montreal that could be her supposed dead half sister whom her father had last seen in 1942 as he and his wife with their child were seperated, he to be taken from camp to camp working, “I could write a Michlin guide to the camps” he used to joke, and eventually surviving, they to be taken to Belzec, a death camp.
My dibbouk particularly liked to show up when we were alone, or rather face to face, her and I, in the evening or early in the morning when I couldn’t sleep…..I’d grown into the habit of talking to her, sometimes with a mock careing attitude: So, did you sleep well? Or other times with a resigned anger: Will you never leave me alone?***
She didn’t understand exactly why in the photos from this person found on social media, there was a recent picture of her own father in the background but decides to go to Montreal to spend time with this woman.
I know that it’s impossible. I’m a rational person, I have no fascination for paranormal phenomenon, I treat myself with real chemicals having guaranteed side effects, I believe neither in paradise nor in resurection. Parallel lives, no, completely out of the question.***
This story of discovery of the wartime experience, of its aftermath and the multiple strands and people, of what had/might have happened is particularly well told, a good choice for our long shortlist.
First Published in french as “Dibbouks” in 2021, by l’Antilope.
*** my translation
The quotes as read in French before translation
Mes parents ont quitté la Pologne pour m’assurer un avenir ou un espoir d’avenir, me sauvant des discriminations et des jets de pierre dont eux-mêmes avaient parfois été victimes ou témoins dans leur jeunesse. Je note que choisir le pays des Intifadas pour échapper aux jets de pierre est en soi une blague juive.
Je sais que c’est impossible. Je suis une personne rationnelle, je n’ai aucune fascination pour les phénomènes paranormaux, je me soigne qu’avec de bons produits chimiques aux effets secondaires garantis, je ne crois ni au paradis ni à la résurrection. Des vies parallèles, non, c’est tout à fait exclu.
Ma dibbouk aimait particulièrement se manifester dans la solitude, ou plutôt en tête-à tête, elle et moi, le soir ou le matin, très tôt, quand je n’arrivais plus à dormir….J’avais pris l’habitude de lui parler, parfois avec une sollicitude moqueuse: alors, tu as bien dormi? Ou d’autresfois avec colère résignée: tu ne me lâcheras donc jamais?
South of Paris books 
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