Pierre Lemaitre ‘Couleurs de l’incendie’

Little Paul, aged seven, was standing on the window ledge, his arms flung wide. Staring into the void. He was wearing his black mourning suit, but his tie had been ripped off and his white shirt was open. Everyone stared into the heavens as though anticipating the launch of an airship. Paul bent his knees slightly. Before anyone had time to call to him, to run, he let go of the shutters as Madeleine screamed. As it fell, the child’s body fluttered wildly like a bird hit by a shotgun pellet. After a swift, hectic descent, he landed on the black canopy and disappeared for a moment. The crowd suppressed a sigh of relief. But he bounced off the taut canvas and reappeared, like a jack-in-the-box. Once again, the crowd watched as he was catapulted into the air, over the curtain. And landed with a crash on his grandfather’s coffin.

Since Lemaitre’s “The Great Swindle” (Au revoir là-haut), written in 2013 he has written two other books to complete a cycle of books dealing with the inter-war period, this book translated into English as “All Human Wisdom”, is the second in the cycle.
This book, covers the first part of the interwar years, beginning with the death of the head of the Péricourt bank, Marcel Péricourt and his almost state funeral attended amongst others by the President of the Republic. But this funeral, almost as a preface to these difficult years, turns to chaos as Marcel‘s grandson dives from a second floor window onto Marcel‘s coffin, as described in the opening quote.

This book covers the main theme of revenge, unexpected revenge. Marcel may have been an astute banker but as a Human being he was not too insightful. Firstly attempting to set up his daughter and heir Madeleine with his adviser Gustave Joubert, which after a short while Madeleine rejects, and then insulting Joubert in his will:

“To Gustave Joubert, the devoted and honest colleague who has worked alongside me for so many years, one hundred thousand francs. And to the staff of the Péricourt household, fifteen thousand francs, to be paid out by my daughter as and when she sees fit.” Joubert, who had all the poise and self-control that Charles entirely lacked, considered his bequest bitterly. This was not even a kick in the teeth, it was charity. He had ranked last, just before the maids, the chauffeur and the gardeners.

Lemaitre first shows us the connivance and insider dealings of a certain class in the interwar period as Joubert, in his role as adviser, leads Madeleine to ruin whilst enriching himself and eventually buying the Péricourt home for himself. And here, almost in Shakespearean form at end of this second act, he has set the scene for Madeleine‘s revenge.

This is an excellent series capturing the spirit of these interwar years, I would warmly recommend this book, which can be read as part of the series or as a standalone book in its own right.

First published in French by Albin Michel in 2018 as ‘Couleurs de lˋincendie’
Translated into English by Franck Wynne and published by Maclehose Press as ‘All Human Wisdom’ in 2021.

Tristan Saule ‘Héroïne’

It’s a heartbreaking tracking shot, and Laura is the camera filming the scene as she lives it, stunned by the composition, by the light, by the senseless emotion it provokes in her, the anger, the despair in her throat, the shame, the fear and the pity in the eyes of Marion, frozen on her doorstep. A small boy holding her hand.***

For my fourth book read this year for the Readers Prize at the Quai du Polar in Lyon I am reading Tristan Saule’s ‘Héroïne’. Set in the first months of the lockdowns, in reading it, I realised that there is now an adequate distance in time for my mind to ask if this actually happened rather than shrinking from it. The story takes place in a run down high rise housing estate there are the petty criminals peddling drugs, each zone of the estate, here the Heights, with its chain of command. But this is thrown into disarray by the lockdowns because after the first months no more drugs are available. Until a consignment of heroin could become available:

Lounès and Tonio get out of the car. Tonio locks the doors and the BMW says good night. An ambulance slowly crosses the neighbourhood, lighting up the square in a blue reflection. — what’s wrong? Asks Tonio noticing that Lounès doesn’t go straight in but is standing there on the pavement waiting. The ambulance slows to drive over a speed bump. Blue lights shine silently on the cars, the windows, the balconies, the walls and the two night owls. The ambulance turns left heading for the hospital, disappears. —Salim says there’s a bastard looking to sell heroin in the “Hights”. You’ve heard anything, you? In daylight Tonio’s blushing cheeks would have given him away. —No, he answers. Nothing special.***

There are the ordinary people living in these high rise estates, Joëlle who normally lives from cleaning jobs, paid cash in hand, but her clients are locked down and all are at home, there is Thierry, who can’t afford to buy nappies for his baby and there is Zacharie who pedals to deliver food but has no fixed income and only lives on commission. They are contacted to distribute the heroin:

Listen, says Zacharie. All day me, I deliver food. I pick it up in kitchens, and I swear, you wouldn’t leave a flee ridden rat in them. That’s my fault? Fuck, I’m a delivery man. If there are blokes that want to buy that stuff, that’s their problem. This, this is the same thing. — come on, heroin, it’s not kebabs is it interrupts Joëlle. My sister in law, she liked to get stoned on heroin and she died. My brother in law, he eats kebabs and he’s just fat.***

And then there is Laura, an auxiliary nurse at the local hospital with her life about to come crumbling around her, her girlfriend of two years no longer answers to her calls since the start of lockdown and she discovers the truth about Marion as illustrated in the opening quote. We then live an extenuating night in the COVID intensive care unit with Laura.

It only takes a small grain of sand for all of these worlds to come into collision, as the gypsy who is receiving the heroin falls ill and is rushed to hospital after telling his drinking friends a hidden secret about himself. Then under the effects of morphine he mistakes Laura for a girl he met in the war in Bosnia, Lejla:

All the while talking, Laura comes closer and pulls the sheet up over the gypsy’s chest. He puts his hand on hers. This time the movement is smoother. Laura doesn’t pull away. —The dope, he says. You have to go and find the dope, Leijla. I’ve hidden it but they’ll find it in the end. You have to get it.

This really was rather an excellent story with a twist at the end. A real competitor for the prize!

First Published in French by Parallèle Noir in 2022.

*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

C’est un travelling poignant, et Laura est la caméra qui filme la scène en même temps qu’elle la vit, abasourdie par la composition, par la lumière, par l’émotion insensée qu’elle provoque en elle, la rage et le désespoir dans sa gorge, la honte, la peur et la pitié dans les yeux de Marion, figée sur le seuil de sa maison. Un petit garçon lui tient la main.

Lounès et Tonio sortent de la voiture. Tonio verrouille les portes et la bm dit bonne nuit. Une ambulance traverse le quartier à faible allure, illumine la place carrée de reflets bleutés. — Qu’est-ce qu’y a? demande Tonio en constatant que Lounès ne rentre pas directement chez lui et qu’il attend planté là, sur le trottoir. L’ambulance ralentit pour passer un dos d’âne. Les éclairs bleus frappent en silence les voitures, les fenêtres, les balcons, les murs et les visages de deux noctambules. L’ambulance tourne à gauche, prend la route de l’hôpital, disparaît. — Salim, il dit qu’il y a un bâtard qui cherche à fourguer de l’héroïne dans les Hauts. T’as entendu parler de ça, toi? En plein jour, le rouge qui teinte les joues de Tonio l’aurait trahi. — Non, répond-il. Rien de spécial.

Écoute, dit Zacharie. Toute la journée, moi je livre de la bouffe. Je vais la chercher dans des cuisines, je te jure, tu mettrais pas un rat pouilleux là-dedans. C’est de ma faute? Putain, moi je suis le livreur. S’il y a des mecs pour acheter ça, c’est leur problème. Là, c’est la même chose. — Enfin, l’héroïne, c’est pas des kebabs quand même, intervient Joëlle. Ma belle-sœur, elle s’est défoncée à l’héroïne, elle est morte. Mon beau-frère, il bouffe des kebabs, il est juste obèse.

Tout en parlant, Laura s’approche et remonte le drap sur la poitrine du Manouche. Il pose sa main sur la sienne. Cette fois, le geste est moins brusque. Laura ne se dégage pas. — La came, dit-il. Il faut que t’ailles chercher la came, Lejla. Je l’ai planquée mais ils finiront par la trouver. Il faut que tu la récupères.

Stanislas Petrosky ‘L’affaire de l’île Barbe’

I maybe have another, professor… Lacassagne and Gustini turned to look inquisitively at me. — Well go ahead, speak young man. Don’t keep us hanging on for no reason! —This….as I spoke, I rolled up my sleeve. —But why didn’t I think of that before! It’s a totally valid hypothesis…this woman could have tattoos on her legs which would have allowed us to identify her.

Next, my third book read this year for the Readers Prize at the Quai du Polar in Lyon. This is meant to be the first book in a series named after a street gang in Lyons, the Apaches, whose main protagonist, Ange-Clément Huin, an ex-member of this gang, assists the medical examiner, Alexandre Lacassagne in the early 1880’s.

This first case begins with an unknown woman’s corpse, with the legs sectioned and missing, being found in a sack, floating on the river Rhône. At the time the morgue was on a docked river boat, not close to the houses due amongst other reasons to the smell, and the law for viewing dead corpses:

It had frozen on the night of the 10th to the 11th of January 1881. The slight wind that deadens your ear tips was particularly disagreeable. Already a long queue was beginning to form on the river bank. Outside of the floating morgue which was anchored to the Hôtel-Dieu Quai, opposite the Soufflot Dôme, by large chains, the public was getting impatient. I had never been able to understand all of these onlookers who turned up to queue at the break of dawn to see corpses! They were thus able to quench their unhealthy thirst for curiosity thanks to the law that states that “any unidentified body brought to the morgue will remain exposed to the public for as long as its state of conservation will allow”.

Ange-Clément uses his knowledge of the criminal world at the time to help Lacassagne to better understand criminal motives and the underworld in general, such as his description here of his arm:

I thought back to a street fight I’d been part of….I was faced with several ruffians and had no more ammunition for my pistol. I had the same handgun as all of the Apaches. Which was a bit like that strange knife that the Swiss army had just bought for its soldiers. You could eat with it, take your rifle apart, and it had a blade, a tin opener, a flat head screwdriver and a punch. And so my weapon was at once a revolver, a dagger and a knuckle duster.

The idea for this series is interesting, the language giving a feeling of the 1880’s and the interaction of the characters seems good, but the crime itself and its resolution, or in this case non resolution felt like a book only half finished and left me slightly frustrated in spite of the many many pages of reference texts about the characters and period at the end of the book. Unfinished is the feeling that remains with me at the end.

First Published in French by AFITT editions in 2022.

*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

Moi, j’en aurais peut-être bien une autre, professeur… Lacassagne et Gustini se tournèrent vers moi avec des yeux pleins d’interrogation. — Eh bien allez-y, parlez, mon garçon. Ne nous faites point donc languir plus que de raison ! — Ça… En parlant, je retroussai ma manche afin de laisser apparaître mon avant-bras. — Mais comment n’y ai-je pas pensé plus tôt ! C’est une hypothèse tout à fait possible… Cette femme pouvait être tatouée sur les jambes, ce qui aurait permis de l’identifier.

Il avait gelé dans la nuit du 10 au 11 janvier 1881. Le petit vent qui vous engourdissait la pointe des oreilles n’était pas ce qu’il y avait de plus agréable. Déjà, une longue file commençait à naître sur la rive. Le public s’impatientait devant la morgue flottante amarrée par de grosses chaînes sur le quai de l’Hôtel-Dieu, en face du grand Dôme de Soufflot. Jamais je n’avais pu comprendre tous ces badauds qui venaient aux aurores faire la queue pour pouvoir voir du macchabée ! Ils profitaient, pour assouvir leur curiosité malsaine, du règlement qui disait que « le cadavre de toute personne inconnue apporté à la morgue restera exposé aux regards du public tant que son état de conservation le permettra ».

Je repensais à une bagarre de rue à laquelle j’avais été mêlé… Plusieurs bougres me faisaient face, et je n’avais plus de munitions dans mon revolver. Je disposais de la même arme de poing que tous les Apaches. Qui était un peu comme ce drôle de couteau que l’armée suisse venait d’acheter pour ses soldats. On pouvait manger avec, démonter le fusil d’ordonnance, et il disposait d’une lame, d’un ouvre-boîte, d’un tournevis plat et un poinçon. Eh bien mon arme faisait office de revolver, de surin et de coup-de-poing américain.

Benoît Séverac ‘Le tableau du peintre juif’

The Yellow Vests killed me. The sentence could make you laugh. My generation – I’m fifty two years old – remember the Omar Raddad affair , where he was never clearly shown to be guilty. In my case it couldn’t be clearer: I was dead already by the second weekend of the Yellow Vest demonstrations at it was them, the roundabout rebels, that were guilty. I had a transport company. Small. Three lorries, including the one I drove, and three employees including the secretary.

Into my second book read this year for the Readers Prize at the Quai du Polar in Lyon. This is the second book by Severac read for this prize after “Tuer le fils” read in 2021 and from the same publisher. The main protagonist of this story is Stéphane Milhas, a person that has been full of energy in his life, setting up more than one business, such as at the beginning of the story a haulage company that goes under due to outside forces. in this instance the yellow vests as illustarted in the opening quote. This is a blueprint for Milhas, outside forces acting on him, and him fighting against these forces.

Milhas’s aunt and uncle are cleaning up their lives having decided to enter an old persons home and leave him a painting from his grandfather, a member of the resistance, painted by a Jew that his father had helped escape during the war, he decides to get his grandfather recognised as Righteous Among the nations, a task to get him out of his slump as his wife, Irène had said:

She’s right, I wallowed in my classification as a victim through all these months of being unemployed. And to be quite frank about it, I didn’t set out to get the recognition of Righteous Among the Nations for my grandparents, but for myself. I realise that. I can see that clearly now.

The first section of the book follows Milhas in his quest and eventually to Tel Aviv to have his painting verified before the announcement. However this is where things go seriously wrong, there seems to be an error in the timelines as his grandfather had helped Eli Trudel and his wife to escape from France after their confirmed death in the camps, he is initially arrested, his painting is confiscated and his grandfather’s name soiled.

Since I haven’t stopped asking why I had been arrested. “What’s happening? What have I done?” They didn’t utter a word. Until an officer appeared accompanied by an interpreter to tell me that my painting had been seized. Stolen Art. Spoliation from Jews. The Shoah, the camps, denunciations….I’ve just tumbled into the wrong side of History. Well at the very least, my grandfather. But it was as if it was me. My family, my name….ruined; We are officially bastards.

Then begins a Tour de France and of Spain as he seeks to unravel the story and clear his grandfather’s name. I must admit that I lost a little interest as he went from location to location with descriptions of the places etc; not a winner for me.

First Published in French by La manufacture de livres in 2022.

*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

Depuis, je n’ai cessé de demander les raisons de mon arrestation. « Que se passe-t-il ? Qu’ai-je fait ? » Ils ont observé un mutisme total. Jusqu’à ce qu’un officier se présente accompagné d’un interprète et me signifie la saisie de mon tableau. Art volé. Spoliateur de Juifs. La Shoah, les camps, les dénonciations… Je viens de basculer du mauvais côté de l’Histoire. Tout au moins, mon grand-père. Mais c’est comme si c’était moi. Ma famille, mon nom… salis ; nous sommes officiellement des salauds.

Les Gilets jaunes m’ont tuer. » La phrase pourrait prêter à sourire. Ceux de ma génération – j’ai cinquante-deux ans – se souviennent de l’affaire Omar Raddad dont la culpabilité n’a jamais été clairement établie. Dans mon cas, c’est on ne peut plus transparent : je suis mort dès le deuxième week-end de manifestations des Gilets jaunes, et ce sont bien eux, les révoltés des ronds-points, les coupables. J’avais une entreprise de transport. Petite. Trois camions, dont celui que je conduisais, et trois employés en comptant la secrétaire.

Elle a raison, je me suis complu dans ma situation de victime pendant tous ces mois de chômage. Et pour être tout à fait franc, je ne me suis pas lancé dans cette reconnaissance du statut de Justes parmi les Nations pour mes grands-parents, mais pour moi. J’en suis conscient. Je suis plus lucide maintenant.

Stéphane Milhas, Irène, Eli Trudel

Roxanne Bouchard ‘Nous sommes le sel de La mer’

Gaspésie is a land for the poor whose only wealth is the sea, then the sea dies. It’s a jumble of memories, a country which shuts its gob, and so doesn’t upset anyone, a land of misery with only the open sea as comfort. And so we hung on like men with nothing. Like fisherman that need to be consoled.***

“We Were the Salt of the Sea” , by Roxane Bouchard was my first book read this year for the Readers Prize at the Quai du Polar in Lyon this year. This a book about a remote fishing village in Quebec, at the mouth of the Saint Lawrence river. A land of fishermen before the sea fish, the cod and the Mackerel became rare, emprisoning the older villagers as the community ages and the younger generations tries to make the switch to tourism, as illustrated in the opening quote.
I will admit that the writing, trying to convey the local vernacular nearly lost me, the writing can only do half of the work and I don’t really have a reference in my mind for the musicality of this particular way of speaking allowing me to do my half of the work, I was further confused by the Hiiii before every sentence spoken by Cyrille, thinking it was his way of speaking ( but before every sentence), only learning at the end that he had trouble breathing. But with Vital always saying “saint-ciboire-de-câlisse?” With every sentence and Renaud beginning every sentence with “j’m’en vas vous dire rien qu’une affaire,” I confess I found this off putting.

But I persevered through the first thirty pages, and what chance, this is a marvellous book!
Set mostly in the modern day but with a couple of flashbacks to the seventies. As the book begins back then, a woman is giving birth alone on a yacht, a sailor on another ship in the dock hears screaming and comes aboard, helping to finish the birth.
Forward to the present day as a drowned dead body is caught early one morning:

“Hiiii…Hi youngster! So you came in the end! — Well yeah! — Well we’re not going straight away. — what do you mean? What’s up? — It’s Vital. Hiiii… You who likes that, fishing stories, well you’re gonna get one! — I don’t follow. — Seems he caught a someone drowned in his net…. Hiiii…. S’what he said on his VHF radio.”***

We soon learn that the dead body is Marie Garant, a woman in her sixties who’s home is here but spends her life sailing around the world and only coming back every few years for a short stay. Why was the detective from the City, Montréal, chosen to investigate in this village where everyone knows everyone and the coroner decides from the start that this must be an accident, she must have hit her head on the boom and fallen overboard. Who is the young woman Catherine Day that turned up around the time of the “accident” and is asking questions? Nearly all of the protagonists are of a similar age to Marie Garant. And why does she always go back to sea, as Cyrille tells Catherine:

Exoticism is a trap, doc, temporary entertainment for amateur photographers that make a scrapbook of their lives.***

The facts, or the memories of this story: another sea death when every fishing family has lost someone at sea, this is not an unusual event, are slowly, almost reluctantly distilled over 300 pages as Roxanne Bouchard slows the story down to the speed of the sea.
This is a clear possible winner.

First Published in French by vlb éditeur in 2022.

*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

«La Gaspésie, c’est une terre de pauvres qui a juste la mer pour richesse, pis la mer se meurt. C’est un agrégat de souvenirs, un pays qui ferme sa gueule pis qui écœure personne, une contrée de misère que la beauté du large console. Pis on s’y accroche comme des hommes de rien. Comme des pêcheurs qui ont besoin d’être consolés.»

«Hiiii… Salut la p’tite! T’es venue, finalement! — Ben oui! — Mais on partira pas tout de suite. — Comment ça? Qu’est-ce qui se passe? — C’est Vital. Hiiii… Toi qui aimes ça, les histoires de pêche, tu vas en avoir toute une! — Je comprends pas. — Ça a l’air qu’y’a ramassé un noyé dans son filet… Hiiii… Y l’a dit dans sa radio marine.»

L’exotisme, c’est un leurre, doc, un divertissement temporaire pour les amateurs de photos qui font du scrapbooking avec leur vie.

Négar Djavadi ‘Arène’

Sam’s brain thinks ahead at full speed. It’s out of the question for her to give him this chance, then have to watch his devilish efficient demonstration of how to do it, dropping a little comment on the way such as: « at one time or another you have to know how to get things done. We’re not going to wake him up softly with a cup of tea! » a phrase she could quickly translate as « what the fuck are you up to, Baydar, stood there whispering sweet nothings in his ear! »***

This is Négar Djavadi’s second book, Arène, as in the Arena in Ancient Rome. The real leading role in this book is the forgotten Eastern arrondissements of Paris, centred here on Belleville, where the different housing estates have been forgotten by the politicians, they are poor, with an economy based on drug trafficking and tit for tat killings between the young gang members of the different estates, added to this are the many migrants sleeping in the streets.

A young man dies on the bank of a canal and the powder keg explodes.

Djavadi tells this story through a huge cast of characters, firstly from the point of view of Benjamin Grossman, in charge of the sector « France » of BeCurrent, the primary competitor of Netflix, back from Los Angeles and visiting his childhood home in one of these housing estates. In between being a person of major importance for the local entertainment industry and being unknown on the streets of Belleville, and his culture shock coming back to this from LA. Grossman may be responsible for the death, having pushed the young man, thinking he had stolen Grossman’s phone, the man, Issa Zeitounï, falls awkwardly and bangs his head before getting up and walking away.

There is the young policewoman Baydar, of Turkish origin, already disowned by her family for joining the police, illustrated in the opening quote, under pressure from her macho team mate, Dalloz and who finds Issa by the banks of the canal, thinks he is a drugged migrant, shakes him and then ceding to the pressure, kicking him to try to get a response, before discovering he is dead.

There is Camille a young sixth form student and video activist who films Baydar and edits her video to show the police not even leaving the local people alone when they are dead but kicking their corpses:

Like everyone on Twitter, Camille is after popularity and followers. Anyone who would sign up to a social network without these aims would be relegated to being a third class citizen, an”Invisible”, a “Beggar”, condemned to a long stay in the hold with the rats and other forgotten people.***

And then there is Stéphane Jahanguir Sharif, an observer of society, as his Twitter handle goes, who’s part in the drama is to use his followers to whip up dissent, and his trusted supporters on the ground to lead the violence.

There wouldn’t be a story without a tragedy as things get out of hand, there will be winners and losers but few will be indifferent, and of course the local politician tries to shine.

There were a lot of characters, requiring concentration to follow all of the strands of this story, looking at how little it can take in our on line society to whip up violence. I would read this book again.

First Published in French by Levi in 2020.

*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

Le cerveau de Sam anticipe à toute vitesse. Hors de question qu’elle lui laisse cette opportunité, puis le regarde achever sa démonstration, redoutablement efficace, balançant au passage une petite phrase du genre: « À un moment, il faut savoir en découdre. On va pas se l’jouer pensionnat chic, réveil en douceur et compagnie! » Phrase au qu’elle se dépêcherait de traduire par: « qu’est-ce que tu fous, Baydar, plantée là, à lui susurrer des petits mots doux à l’oreille! »

Comme tout le monde sur Twitter, Camille court après la popularité et les followers. D’ailleurs, s’inscrire sur un réseau social sans set objectif vous reléguerait très vite au rang de citoyen de troisième classe, un Invisible, un Gueux, condamné à un séjour prolongé dans la cale parmi les rats et les autre oubliés.

Le Mage du Kremlin ‘Giuliano Da Empoli’

—That’s where you are wrong, Vadim Alexeïevitch, you’ve let yourself be persuaded by westerners that an election campaign consists of two teams of economists arguing over a PowerPoint file. This is not the case: in Russia power is something different.

This book, read for the Roman de Rochefort and written by Da Empoli before the Russian invasion of Ukraine was written to give us insight into what Putin’s Russia had become and to try to explain its logic. Da Empoli has chosen to tell us the story through the eyes of the « Wizard of the Kremlin », come from the world of television production and giving us the idea that everything is a production.

Vadim Alexeïevitch Baranov ties together everything that happens in Russia since the 90’s, he is present when Berezovsky presents this unknown man from the security establishment to him, the latest in a number of prime ministers, thinking that he will be able to control him:

Berezovsky had asked me to meet him at the FSB headquarters, what used to be the KGB. He welcomed me with a wide smile in the dark mausoleum of the entry hall as if he was in the lounge of his house Logovaz. He seemed perfectly at ease in this sinister setting, and, at the same time he couldn’t resist the temptation to try to scare me. « Do you know what the Muscovites used to say about the Loubianka back in the days of the USSR? That it was the tallest building in the city because from’its cellars you could see Siberia.

Baranov tells us of the rise of the Oligarchs in the 90’s through his ex school friend, Khodorkovsi who wants and gets Baranov’s girlfriend,and the incidentally of their fall:

Mikhaïl began regularly coming around to our house. He turned up alone or accompanied by young girls selected from the four corners of the empire for the clarity of their skin and the geometry of their features. He picked us up in his Bentley, or his Jaguar, or in an enormous Mercedes, and took us out to the best Géorgien restaurants in town.

But the main aim is of course to give us insights into the way Putin works, the opening quote for instance, should be no surprise, elections, first in Russia, shouldn’t be left to such a random process as presenting competing ideas and choosing. What Putin was trying to establish at the time is of no surprise in retrospect, A sovereign democracy where Putin controls everything:

A sovereign democracy, that was the objective. To manage it we needed men of steel, capable of ensuring the primary function of any state, to be capable of both defence and of attack this elite already existed. It was the siloviki, men from the security forces. Poutine was one of theirs…. He placed them one by one in positions of command. At the head of the state, of course, but also at the head of private enterprises, which he took back one by one from the hands of the speculators from the nineties. Energy, raw materials, transport, communications. Men from the security forces replaced the oligarchs in every sector.

Baranov tells us of the way Putin, referred to throughout as the Tsar, doesn’t give direct orders but sets out a framework then sits back and waits. He tells us of his meetings with Evgueni Prigogine and the directions he, as a producer, gives Prigogine to interfere in the American elections, as in judo, the opponent is far too large, you must use his own hatred for his opponents against him, just fan the flames. He also reminds him that of course he shouldn’t worry about being caught, that is the whole point of the operation, in being caught that will project much more power than you actually have.

And a last one for the road, when Baranov explains to the local militia in the Russian occupied areas of the east of Ukraine that war is a process, that the whole point is that the war is never over, that the aim is not to conquer but to cause chaos, to illustrate that you can’t trust the west. This strategy may have been outed in the last six months since the book was published.

First Published in French by Gallimard in 2023.

*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

—C’est là que vous faites erreur, Vadim Alexeïevitch, vous vous êtes laissé convaincre par les occidentaux qu’une campagne électorale consiste en deux équipes d’économistes qui se disputent autour d’un dossier en PowerPoint. Ce n’est pas le cas: en Russie, le pouvoir c’est autre choses.”

Berezovsky m’avait donné rendez-vous au siège du FSB, l’ancien KGB. Il m’accueillit tout sourire, dans le sombre sépulcre du hall d’entrée comme s’il se trouvait au salon de la maison Logovaz. Il semblait parfaitement à son aise en ce lieu sinistre et, en même temps, il ne résistait pas à la tentation d’essayer de me faire peur. “sais-tu ce que disaient les Moscovites de la Loubianka à l’époque de l’URSS? Que c’était l’immeuble le plus haut de la ville car de ses caves on voyait la Sibérie….”

Mikhaïl se mit à fréquenter assidûment notre maison. Il se présentait seul ou accompagné de jeunes filles sélectionnées aux quatre coins de l’empire pour la luminosité de leur teint et la géométrie de leurs traits. Il nous embarquait dans sa Bentley, ou sa Jaguar, ou dans une énorme Mercedes, et nous conduisait dans le meilleur restaurant géorgien de la ville.

Une démocratie souveraine, tel était l’objectif. Pour le réaliser, nous avions besoin d’hommes d’acier, capables d’assurer la fonction primordiale, de tout état: être une arme de défense et d’attaque. Cette élite existe déjà. C’était des siloviki, les hommes des services de sécurité. Poutine était un de leurs…ils les a placés un à un dans les positions de commandement. Au sommet de l’état, certes, mais aussi à la tête d’entreprises privées, qu’il a récupérées une à une des mains des affairistes des années quatre-vingt-dix. L’énergie, les matières premières, les transports, les communications. Les hommes de la force ont remplacé les oligarques dans tous les secteurs.

Doan Bui ‘La Tour’

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.

Béatrice Commengé ‘Alger, rue des bananiers

The word war had still not been pronounced. France hasn’t been at war for twelve years: that was the official story. A rebellion wasn’t a war. And the army come over from France to put down the rebellion wasn’t a war time army. The dead and the wounded in the cafés weren’t war victims . Everything was ok.***

Opening quote remind you of anything contemporary? Well so it should, if you don’t give it it’s name all is well, remember the Indian Mutiny? In this book, my fourth read for the Prix du Roman de Rochefort 2022, Béatrice Commengé, going through her father’s books, mostly about Algeria, decides to investigate her own family’s relationship with Algeria, she herself left one year before independence as a soon to be teenager. Commengé juxtaposes her happy childhood memories growing up in France’s Algerian colony, mostly unaware of the events taking place leading up to independence and her family over four generations. Could they possibly not know of the violence on which l’Algerie Française was built, that their land had been taken from someone else and that these people had fought for more than one hundred years for their land as in the following extract describing a village close to her great great grandmother Jeanne’s address in 1860:

The colony had already known catastrophes. On the right bank the village of Maison carrée, — a brand new name, like Fort-de-l’Eau, had developed. Even the soil was new, reclaimed from the marshes, and bit by bit planted with vineyards and orange groves. Good crops. Cleaned of any past lives. Even the name of the tribe who lived on these lands thirty years previously had been forgotten, the Ouffia, or Aouffia, the night of the 6th to 7th of April 1832 had been forgotten when the duke of Rovigo had assembled the two hundred and ninety five horses of his cavalry, backed up by two infantry squadrons with the orders to exterminate anyone resisting their attack, without discrimination of age or sex. How many were there of the El Ouffia to warrant such force? The disagreement over the numbers still goes on today.***

No she concludes, Jeanne had not forgotten the Ouffia, she had no idea of their previous existence.

As the violence closes in on Algers, her child’s knowledge of events comes to the fore when De Gaulle tells the people of Algers (for people read Europeans) that he has understood them, “Je vous ai compris”, à somewhat famous quote here in France:

Three days after Father’s Day, the 18th of June , the head of the école Dujonchay gathered all of the pupils in the yard. She explained to us that we were celebrating an anniversary, that of “l’appel du général de Gaulle, the 18th of June 1940”. The very same de Gaulle. She reminded us that he had saved France in creating the Resistance and that now he was going to save French Algeria.***

A necessary book told from an unusual angle, but full of names and dates, not making it a favourite of mine for the prix du “Roman”.

First Published in french as “Algers, rue des bananiers” in 2020, by Editions Verdier.

*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

Le mot guerre n’était toujours pas prononcé. La France n’était pas en guerre depuis douze ans: c’était là l’histoire officielle. Une rébellion n’était pas une guerre. Et l’armée venue de France pour combattre la rébellion n’était pas une armée de guerre. Les morts et les blessés des cafés n’était pas des victimes de guerre. Tout allait bien.

Trois jours après la fête des Pères, le 18 juin, la directrice de l’école Dujonchay a rassemblé tous les élèves dans la cour. Elle nous a expliqué qu’on fêtait un anniversaire, celui de “l’appel du général de Gaulle, le 18 juin 1940”. Le même de Gaulle. Elle nous a rappelé qu’ils sauvé la France en créant la Résistance et qu’il allait maintenant sauver l’Algérie française.

La colonie a déjà connu ses catastrophes. Sur la rive droite s’est développé le village de Maison-Carrée — un nom tout neuf, comme Fort-de-l’Eau. Même la terre est neuve á Maison-Carrée, conquise sur les marécages, et peu à peu plantée de vignes et d’orangers. De belles cultures. Nettoyée de toutes vies passées. On a oublié jusqu’au nom de tribu qui vivait là trente ans plus tôt, les Ouffia, ou Aouffia, on a oublié la nuit du 6 et 7 avril 1832 où le duc de Rovigo a réuni les deux cent quatre-vingt-cinq chevaux de sa cavalerie, épaulés par deux compagnies d’infanterie avec ordre d’exterminer tous ceux que résisteraient à l’attaque, sans distinction d’âge ou de sexe. Combien y avait-il d’El Ouffia pour nécessiter tant de bras armés? La dispute sur les chiffres dure encore.

Didier van Cauwelaert ‘Un aller simple’

“I started in life as a child found by accident. Stolen with a car as it happens. An Ami 6 of Citroën heritage. So they called me Ami 6 so as not to forget. Well these are my origins so to speak. As time went on they shortened it to Aziz.”***

After my mother in law died, I picked up a few of her books, this one ‘One Way’, priced at 89,00F from 1994, it’s going back a bit but I think I may have bought if for her. Incidentally it won the Prix Goncourt that year.

Aziz Kemal (see the opening quote), brought up in Marseilles by gypsies that found him in a car they’d stolen, had no identity papers, nothing new there, where he was brought up nobody did, but nobody got caught, except this time Aziz did, and at his own wedding.

Aziz is then expelled to Morocco, back then they imagined he would be accompanied by a cultural attaché to help him reintegrate Morocco. (Bless them, no flights to Rwanda for processing back then!) Except of course neither he nor the attaché had ever been to Morocco.

When pushed by Jean-Pierre Schneider, the young attaché about where he comes from, he makes up a story about a village in a secret valley, Irghiz and so begins their journey.

Must say I enjoyed this book, are they both looking for something, besides this non existant village? Well of course they are.

First Published in french as “Un aller Simple” in 1984, by Albin Michel

Translated into English by Mark Polizzotti and published in 2003 by Other Press

***My translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

J’ai commencé dans la vie comme enfant trouvé par erreur. Volé avec la voiture, en fait. Une Ami 6 de race Citroën. Alors on m’a appelé Ami 6 en souvenir. Ce sont mes origines, quoi. Avec le temps, pour aller plus vite, c’est devenu Aziz.