Search results for ""author leïla sebbar""

Leïla Sebbar's novel recounts an event in French history that has been hidden for many years. Toward the end of the Algerian war, the FLN, an Algerian nationalist party, organized a demonstration in Paris to oppose a curfew imposed upon Algerians in France. About 30,000 Algerians gathered peacefully, but the protest was brutally suppressed by the Paris police. Between 50 and 200 Algerians were killed and their bodies were thrown into the Seine. This incident provides the background for a more intimate look into the history of violence between France and Algeria. Following three young protagonists—one French, one Algerian, and one French national of Algerian descent—Sebbar takes readers on a journey of discovery and comprehension. Mildred Mortimer's impressive translation conveys the power of Sebbar's words in English and allows English-speaking readers an opportunity to understand the complex relationship between past and present, metropole and colony, immigrant and citizen, that lies at the heart of this acclaimed novel.

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Confessions of a Madman personalizes the struggle of a civil war by following the fragmentation and irreversible separation of a single family. Written in alternating flashbacks and descriptions of a man’s present, Sebbar delivers a modern fable for adults: a tale of familial disorientation, identity, violence, and morality. A young man observes his mother losing her mind while waiting for her murdered husband to return home. Despite his estrangement from his father, the son vows to avenge his father’s death by murdering his father’s killers. In delving into his father’s past, he discovers his role in an unsuccessful revolt and soon finds himself following in his father’s footsteps. This book addresses the meaningfulness of cultural traditions, their origins, and their potential contemporary repercussions when juxtaposed with a modern context of events.

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