2023-11-25 09:06:23
Their names are Salem, Lisa, Ronnie, Céline and Matthieu. They are the protagonists of Our destinies are linkedthe new novel by Walid Hazar Rachedi, dedicated to the generation of the 1980s. A lost generation of which this novel delivers a polyphonic and demanding picture through the portrait of finesse and empathy of five protagonists representative of contemporary France.
« I have lived a thousand lives », Walid Hazar Rachedi likes to repeat. Born in France to parents of Algerian origin, this young forty-year-old grew up in the Paris suburbs. A graduate of computer science and a business school, he traveled the world, practicing his profession as a computer scientist, teacher or journalist. His wanderings have led him from the United States to Portugal where he now lives, via Brazil, Mexico and Cuba. A literature buff, he has been participating in magazines and writing workshops for around fifteen years.
Rachedi is today the author of two novels, the first of which, What would I do in heaven?, was a finalist for the Prix Goncourt for the first novel. His stories are resolutely cosmopolitan, drawing their material from personal experience of crossing countries and universes as well as from the burning news of the war of civilizations. His first novel ends with a bloody attack hitting Eurostar passengers at Gare du Nord. Storyteller of the dysfunctions of modern societies, the writer defines himself as “ teller of worlds “. Distant and interior worlds in the first novel, while Our destinies are linkedhis second novel published this fall, features, against a backdrop of the ups and downs of contemporary France, a galaxy of characters engaged in a quest for identity that is as personal as it is collective.
La « world-literature »
It was through reading French classics that Rachedi came to literature and writing. “ As an only child, I found in reading a form of refuge », remembers the novelist. He also remembers the feverish impatience that seized him on Saturday mornings, while waiting for his mother to take him to the municipal library where imaginary worlds, each more fascinating than the last, piled up on the shelves. quite dusty.
The transition from reading to writing will be more complicated, according to the author, because he had difficulty finding his models among contemporary French writings. English-style “world-literature” will be his door to salvation.
« At the beginning of the 2000’s, says Rachedi, when I started to write, in contemporary French literature, what we saw then were often self-centered novels, a lot of autofiction. They were always novels that lacked a little momentum, at least for my taste. In fact, I couldn’t find anything that resembled the literature I wanted to write. And all of a sudden, when I read ‘Wolf Smile’ by Zadie Smith, which tells the story of multicultural London in the 2000s, with both the small and the big story, full of humor, something very cosmopolitan and at the same time intelligent and funny, I said to myself in fact, this is what literature is, this is what it should look like. And finally, it is also a continuation of the great texts of French literature of the 19th century which had the idea of describing worlds. And recently, I realized that Zadie Smith was ultimately also in a sort of connection with Salman Rushdie. And my name is Walid Hajar Rachedi. So finally, the circle is closed. »
Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie, who the writer claims to be, are the pioneers of modern literature who brought distant stories and their protagonists into the romantic tradition, not as exotic characters, but men and women of flesh and blood. of blood that readers can feel close to. Smith and Rushdie are also formidable “storytellers of worlds”, of their abysses and their mixes. They are the models for Walid Rachedi’s first novel, the action of which takes place between Lille, Seville, Granada, London and distant Kabul.
Our destinies are linked
More Franco-French, the new novel by the writer, Our destinies are linked, is set in contemporary France around serious social and political issues. These issues are embodied by the characters in the story.
« There are five characters who are at the heart of Our destinies are linked, explains the author. The first character is called Salem. He is a 30-year-old financier, who is almost a sort of caricature of the success of French integration, since he attended the Grandes Ecoles coming from a very working-class background. He works in globalized finance. In a slightly different tone, we have the character of Lisa Elatre-Lévy, whose father is West Indian, her mother is Ashkenazi Jewish. She is a brilliant young woman, who succeeds in her studies and who will find herself working in the same tower in La Défense as Salem. She is a bit in this individualistic save-who-can. And finally, Ronnie Elatre-Lévy, Lisa’s brother, who is full of idealism, who has a sort of very pure vision of what music is, what rap is, that he wants to make your life. These are the class defector characters from immigration backgrounds. What interests me in these characters is ultimately everything that we praise through these people who would succeed by forgetting somewhere where they come from and what they are. »
To this trio are added two characters of French origin, but they are also lost and are also in search of their place in society. There is Céline de Verrière, a young woman from Versailles, a student. Dressed all in black, she is on a gothic trip. She is rebellious, but doesn’t know exactly what she is rebelling against. The other French character is named Matthieu. Matthieu Vincent is a former foster child. “ Unlike the other characters who have too many identities, too many heritages, what he suffers from is this deficit of heritage, a deficit that he tries to compensate for through writing, but he fails to give substance to this ambition, condemning himself to remain a Sunday writer, eternally frustrated », Maintains the author.
They are all endearing characters, notably Salem Bensayah, the brother of Malek, hero of the first novel, who died in the attack at the Gare du Nord. In a certain way, Salem continues his brother’s quest for identity and spirituality, by questioning the meaning of his professional success. This novel is a sort of game of musical chairs between these five characters who will reveal themselves through their encounters with others.
« Only connect »
Structured in five parts, like a classic play, Our destinies are linked offers a generational fresco, that of the generation born in the 1980s, engaged in an impossible quest for fulfillment.
« What I want to tell in this novel, proclaims Walid Hajar Rachedi, it’s less the question of identity than of finding one’s place in existence and being in a movement rather than being in a lazy label, in a sort of archetype, because in a very caricatured way, we can imagine that the five characters, at first glance, could represent archetypes of people from 93, a person from Versailles, a person working at La Défense, a student at the Sorbonne: we have all the ingredients for a kind of bad sitcom. And in fact, for me, the challenge was to create literature, it was to tell nuances and deconstruct these archetypes. Some of the characters think that it is in an individualistic save-who-can that they can find a form of fulfillment; in fact, they realize that we are nothing without others. We are nothing without others. That’s important to tell. »
« We are nothing without others “, such is the moral of the story, both optimistic and serious, that Walid Hajar Rachedi tells in his beautiful second novel. However, its morality is not only moral, it is also eminently poetic and joins what literature has continually affirmed throughout the ages. it is reminiscent of the lyrical appeal of the British EM Forster, who wrote in closing his great novel Howard’s End« only connect “, which could be read as a synonym for Our destinies are linked.
Rachedi / Forster, same fight!
Our destinies are linked, by Walid Hajar Rachedi. Editions Emmanuelle Collas, 417 pages, 22 euros.
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