2024-04-14 10:35:05
Today’s “critical spirit” addresses three texts which, beyond very different eras, languages and situations, share the fact that their main character experienced exile, even if it meant freezing to death in a Toronto street. , to fight in front of a French judge with an unfaithful translator or to languish in jealousy in the Argentine pampas.
Today we are in fact successively discussing Two Great Men and a Half by Diadié Dembélé, published by JC Lattès, Cold Case by Vincent Labruffe, which was published by Editions Verticales, and finally the republication by Editions du Tripode of the writer’s book. Argentinian Juan José Saer entitled L’Occasion.
“Two and a half great men”
Two and a Half Great Men is the second novel by Diadié Dembélé, born in western Mali and graduated from the master’s degree in literary creation at the University of Paris 8, like a number of recent voices in contemporary literature.
Published by JC Lattès, the novel draws on Diadié Dembélé’s country of origin, but also on the author’s experience as an interpreter within an association helping migrants.
The book tells the journey from a village in Mali to Bamako then Paris of two friends, Manthia and Toko, told through the story of the first facing justice: “Since the judge wants to know why I left my village and why I chose France, write! », says the narrator.
The device is unique, since it is Manthia who tells his story and that of Toko from the Vincennes detention center, confiding in his lawyer thanks to a translator whom he challenges as he challenges his readers.
« Cold Case »
Cold Case is the fourth book published by Éditions Verticales by Alexandre Labruffe, after a first novel entitled Chronicles of a Service Station and a story entitled A Winter in Wuhan documenting the beginnings of the Covid epidemic in China.
Here, the author leads a literary investigation into the uncle of his South Korean partner Minkyung, who froze to death in Toronto in the 1970s while fleeing a psychiatric hospital.
A book in the form of both an autofiction of the relationship between the narrator and his partner, and a documentary and documented attempt to understand what happened in Canada and whose versions remain contradictory or random, coupled with the desire to approach some political or family ghosts of Korea.
“The Opportunity”
Editions du Tripode continue their work of republishing the books of the great Argentine writer Juan José Saer, born in 1937 in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina, and died in 2005 in Villejuif after spending the entire last part of his life in France . After L’Ancêtre then Glose, the two best-known texts by Juan José Saer, it is L’Occasion, initially published in 1987, which French-speaking readers can once again easily obtain, in the translation by Laure Bataillon.
The main character of L’Occasion, Bianco, made the opposite journey to Juan José Saer, reaching Argentina from Europe, but at a completely different time, since the book is set in the second part of the 19th century, then that the Argentine pampas, an open and wild world, sees the arrival of European models, in particular the fencing of land using barbed wire to demarcate plots: a business in which Bianco engages in the company of an associate and friend, Garay Lopez, whom he discovers contemplating his wife smoking a cigar while smiling, which is enough to convince him of a deception which will take up all the space in his life.
We discuss these three books with:
- Lise Wajeman, professor of comparative literature who chronicles literary news for Mediapart;
- Blandine Rinkel, writer, critic and musician;
- Youness Bousenna, who notably chronicles literary news for Télérama.
“Critical Mind” is a podcast recorded in Gong studios and produced by Karen Beun.
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