Dear Friends,

A large part of this month’s selection of translated French publications centers around testimonies of the recent past.

With Leila Sebbar’s The Seine was Red (Indiana University Press), the reader will rediscover a dark page of French history: the brutal suppression of a peaceful demonstration organised by the Algerian nationalist party towards the end of the Algerian war. Starting from this bloodshed, the author questions the relationship between France and Algeria, and the always aching tension between coloniser and colonised, through the perspective of three narrators of diverse ethic origin.

The Arab identity, and its essentially fluid definition, is also brought into focus through Amin Maalouf’s memoirs, entitled Origins, published by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. After his father’s death, Maalouf undertakes to explore the content of a trunkful of letters, diary entries and personal documents, thus uncovering evidence of his great uncle Gebrayel’s obscure existence. Gebrayel’s successive migrations to New York City and Cuba lead the author, in turn, to embark on a similar trip which conjures up family memories and resentment toward this eccentric and distant relative.  Origins has been selected as part of the French Voices program.

Going back to the seventies, Robert Badinter’s Abolition: One Man’s Battle Against the Death Penalty, published by Northeastern, brings an invaluable testimony on the legal and procedural drama which agitated France after one of Badinter’s clients was decapitated. This prompted the lawyer to start a crusade against what he deemed unworthy of the human race. His choice of clients amongst notorious murderers allowed him to explore all the possible appeal strategies in order to impede the unfolding of the trials, thereby hoping to find an alternative solution to death penalty. Badinter subsequently became Minister of Justice in France and obtained that a legislation be passed to end it once and for all. To the French public, he embodies not only an advocate of human rights, but also a politically and legally involved public figure.

The recent discovery of The Journal of Hélène Berr, by Hélène Berr hasn’t prevented it from becoming, in only a few months, a mythical text, reminiscent in many ways of Anne Frank’s diaries. Hélène Berr is indeed only twenty one when she starts writing her journals. The anti Jewish laws of the Vichy government are a turning point in her existence. The young woman’s growing anxiety, mixed with her love of literature and her hope in a better world yield a wonderfully humane text. Deported to Auschwitz with her parents in March 1944, she almost made it though the horror of the camps, but died a few weeks before Bergen Belsen was liberated.

Her niece, Mariette Job, will be at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York on November 19th, for a conversation with David Bellos, the translator of the book, published in its English version by Weinstein.

Bernard-Henry Lévy latest publication, Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism (Random), addresses what the author identifies as “new barbarism,” that is, the mutation of progressive ethics into new kinds of dangerous attitudes, such as basic anti-Americanism, a systematic rejection of Israel and a justification of Islam’s fanaticism based on “tolerance.”  He enlightens this debate with his personal experience–his reading of thinkers, his own ideological battles– and brings up a new definition for progressivism, based on an absolute commitment to combat evil in all its guises.

The next work of fiction has obtained a French Voices grant, and has been translated and published by Seven Stories Press. Céline Curiol’s Voice Over is her first novel. It portrays the lonely existence of a young Parisian woman whose unrequited love for a man already in a relationship leads to hazardous encounters pointing to her emotional fragility. Curiol’s narrative has attracted a well-deserved attention from the French media, who have unanimously underlined the originality of the plot and the extreme sensibility of the author to the mechanisms of love and human empathy.

An interesting first collection of poems by Isabelle Garron, Face Before Against, has also been released last month, by Litmus Press. The poet presents us with a compelling five-act poem in which the themes of otherness and self, representation and abstraction, are ever present. Through a fragmented style, she aims at concealing the narrative voice to let the object stand out and speak for itself. Abstraction in Isabelle Garron’s writing never loses its concrete dimension, thus acquiring a definitively pictorial dimension. 

If you live in New York, you may want to go to the poetry reading which is organised for her and Rosmarie Waldrop, on November 12th by the Poetry Project, at St Mark’s Church in the Bowery.

Benoît Duteurtre, with Customer Service (The Contemporary Art of the Novella), published by Melville House, has obtained critical acclaim for this seventy-four page rant against customer services, which will certainly sound familiar to many readers. The narrator faces incredulity and frustration as he realises the difficulty of changing his cell-phone plan, and more generally, the dehumanization of services, which are increasingly handled by automatic devices. The author, winner of the Prix Medici,  humorously attacks all those little foibles of our western society, obsessed by time, profit and speed.  

Jean Paul Sartre deemed Jules Renard to be at the origin of contemporary literature. The Journals of Jules Renard, published by Tin Book House, make it clear why: Renard’s art of witticism and sharp comments put an unexpected twist on the unique autobiographical masterpiece. He reflects with accuracy and often melancholy on the literary world of his time, the art scene, and his own increasing celebrity. The journals are written in a rich and incisive language, which have been acknowledged to have a major influence, among others, on the works of Somerset Maugham.

Our selection also includes the delightful re-edition of Toni Ungerer’s The Three Robbers by Phaidon, an amazing, bold and fanciful tale which contrasts sharply with the run-of-the-mill kids’ publications, in terms of both content and illustrations! The plot centers around a little girl called Tiffany, who meets three robbers on her way to live with a wicked aunt. She teaches the three robbers what to do with all the riches that they have been storing up until then, and how good deeds can emerge of wicked actions. You will be mesmerised by the quality of the drawing, the bold and deep tones, and the entertaining qualities of a well-mastered art of story-telling.

Finally, celebrity chef Jacques Pépin and his lastest opus, More Fast Food My Way, published by Houghton Mifflin, will make your mouth water with a selection of fast yet elegant recipes inspired by French cuisine, with a touch of the American style has inspired him over the years. You will be delighted to read that those recipes are not only fuss-free, but stylish and innovative. In only eighteen minutes, a “stuffed pork fillet on grape tomatoes” can adorn your dinner table, to be followed by stunning “mini almond cakes in raspberry sauce,“ whipped up in no more than fifteen minutes. To your pots and pans!

We hope you will enjoy this selection,

Bonne lecture.

Fabrice Gabriel, Anne-Sophie Hermil, Mathilde Billaud, Claire Berget, Alice Barthalon.