In the fifties, the Italy 13 project was launched with the aim to completely renew the 13th arrondissement, a working class area in the south of Paris, and to make it the ideal “contemporary living environment”. It’s designers planned building 55 tower blocks, in the area that used to be the Gobelin’s goods station. This was to be known as the Olympiades as it was supposed to create a sort of idealist sporting community within the city. There would be parks, an ice rink, a swimming pool, shops, happiness within easy reach. It had all been planned before the 70’s oil crisis, a glorious time when we still dreamed of progrès, of territorial conquests in economic terms and also in space. ***
First Published in french as “La Tour” in 2022, by Grasset.
This weekend I was at Vincennes for Festival America where I attended Viet Thanh Nguyen’s intervention about his America and as the hour went on I wondered whether Doan Bui was there due to the similarities between his and her worlds.
This book, was my fifth read for the Prix du Roman de Rochefort 2022, and is centred around the thirteenth arrondissement in Paris well known as the Chinese area. But of course it is much more subtle than this, first of all of course not all of South East Asia is China! Doan Bui through a multiple story of people living in the Olympiades described in the opening quote. As money got tighter in the seventies, the rink, pool and shops were sacrificed and the hoped for upper middle classes never came. The Olympiades were slowly filled with poor immigrants and refugees. Doan Bui tells us of two Vietnamese families, the Truong family, Boat people fleeing Vietnam to finally arrive in these tower blocks and of Victor’s childhood friend *** who left Vietnam years earlier on a scholarship and lives in the Paris suburbs. The Vietnamese are not the radical lefts idea of refugees shown here by Alice, Victor’s wife’s reaction to the socialists coming to power in ‘81:
The left wingers were resolutely secular…. They preferred refugees compatible with their ideals, Iranians for example fleeing religious dictators or South Americans, Chileans escaping from Pinochet or Argentinians persecuted by the Perons. All of the dictatorships in South America were supported by the great American Satan, they welcomed old Nazis, in short it was the super Bingo of evil, what’s more the Argentinian and Chilean refugees were alluring, tall, dark haired, as opposed to the tiny Asian refugees. The left wingers were right to be reticent. Later these same tiny Asians voted as one for the RPR: Chirac was their idol. In May 1981, the day of Mitterand’s election, they collapsed, amazed to see the crowds in fervour at the Bastille. “These stupid French, they cheer on the communists, well they’ll get re-education camps, we’ll see if they still like the reds as much!” Shouted Alice.***
Doan Bui examines the different people living in this “Tower of Babel”, Victor’s daughter Anne-Maï, growing up in France as Viet Thanh Nguyen had in America, and dreaming of being blond, of Ileana the Romanian pianist, now an exiled nanny, looking up her own daughter on her smartphone each night; a sad story here. Of Virgil from Senegal, with no papers, living in one of the underground garages (all of which are inhabited by people who don’t officially exist) and his growing business of writing stories for the refugees that are more realistic to the French administration than their own sad stories. Of Clément so obsessed with the great replacement that he is mentally challenged and thinks he’s Michel Houellebecq’s dog.
A fun but informative book as each of these characters crosses others. The Vietnamese stories reminded me a little of the stories of the arrival of the different characters in Viet Thanh’s book “The Sympathisers” without the spy story.
*** my translation
The quotes as read in French before translation
Dans les années 50, le projet Italie 13 vit le jour. Il visait à rénover en profondeur le 13e arrondissement, quartier populaire du sud parisien, et à en faire la quintessence de « l’habitat moderne ». Ses concepteurs prévoyaient d’ériger 55 tours, là où se situait jadis la gare aux marchandises des Gobelins. L’ensemble avait été nommé les Olympiades car il devait reproduire une sorte de phalanstère sportif dans la ville. Il y aurait des parcs, une patinoire, une piscine, des magasins, le bonheur à portée de main. L’ensemble avait été pensé avant le premier choc pétrolier, glorieuse époque où l’on rêvait encore de progrès, de conquêtes territoriales, économiques et spatiales.
Les gens de gauche étaient résolument laïcs. Les curés, les églises, toute cette bondieuserie : très peu pour eux. Ils préféraient les réfugiés politiquement compatibles, les Iraniens par exemple, fuyant la dictature religieuse ou les dissidents d’Amérique du Sud, Chiliens pourchassés par Augusto Pinochet ou Argentins persécutés par le couple Perón. Toutes ces dictatures en Amérique du Sud étaient soutenues par le Grand Satan américain, elles accueillaient les anciens nazis, bref, c’était le super bingo du Mal, et puis les réfugiés argentins ou chiliens étaient séduisants avec leur haute taille et leur chevelure sombres, contrairement aux réfugiés asiatiques gringalets. Les gens de gauche avaient raison de se méfier. Plus tard, ces mêmes Asiatiques gringalets votèrent en masse pour le RPR : Chirac était leur idole. En mai 1981, le jour de l’élection de Mitterrand, ils s’effondrèrent, affligés de voir à la télévision la foule en liesse à la Bastille. « Ces idiots de Français, ils applaudissent les communistes, on va leur en donner des camps de rééducation, on verra s’ils aiment autant les roses ! » cria Alice.
South of Paris books 