THE MORNING LIST
The literary season is in full swing and the essay is not left out. A summary of five books that are particularly valuable to the “World of Books” team. Like Kamel Daoud’s new novel, hourisbrutal immersion in the Algerian civil war (1992-2002). Or the highly anticipated Nathan Hill, one of the new big names in American fiction, Welfare. Madeleine before dawnby Sandrine Collette, was no less expected. Nor does it disappoint. No more than The Jaguar’s Dreamin which Miguel Bonnefoy continues his anatomy of Venezuela. As for the anthropologist Sabine Guez, she confronts us, in her research Diana’s storyto the daily lives of residents of the most dangerous city in the world, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
NEW. “Houris” by Kamel Daoud
With her shirt torn, bruises on her cheek and a thin scarf around her neck, in the middle of summer, a young woman leaves Oran on foot. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”a driver shouts at her. She is afraid of being raped or killed. Then, as she gets into the car, we understand that this mute woman is in no danger. She is the risk. Because of this long scar in the shape of a smile that she poorly conceals and that reveals the traces of a civil war that kills.
Twenty years after the end of the “black decade” (1992-2002), when Islamist groups and the Algerian army clashed violently, Kamel Daoud awakens a story lacking in collective memory. houris It unfolds today in two parts: from shadow to light, from silence to confrontation. First, the dark and lyrical monologue of 26-year-old Aube, addressing the child she is carrying in her womb. She will not give birth to him in this country that took everything from her, she says. Then, the soliloquy of the bookseller-driver. On a commemorative trip, he will take Aube to this village where, one night, Islamists killed and beheaded.
She has an encyclopedic knowledge of the civil war, to the point of being considered a madman; she bears the scars, but no longer has the vocal cords to speak about it. Embracing the disorder of her memories, the novel evokes buried images, repeating denied horrors in the hope of bearing witness to them. More than a work of truth, Kamel Daoud lays the groundwork for a liberation of the word. GL. My.
NEW. “Wellbeing”, by Nathan Hill
which way to go Welfareby Nathan Hill, with its seven hundred pages sparkling with intelligence and inventiveness? The second novel by this virtuoso and generous storyteller excels at making the reader laugh, as well as stomping on his heart and educating him about the world he lives in. It is as much about love as it is about algorithms and the placebo effect, about political polarization as it is about the mania for quantifying our steps, about American landscapes as it is about positive thinking, fake news, real estate and education.
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