This is a short novel that is divided into 3 parts. I am a huge fan of this authors work and I will read everything that he writes. (I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.) It deals in hopeful migration and eventual disenchantment, loving and living on the fringe, waiting for a future that will always be murky, yet finding ways to make the best of one's situation in the shadows and attempting at decisive re-invention even if they find new pitfalls and snares. Taïa is masterful at giving depth to his characters, bringing alive their conflicts and contradictions, the shiny bits as well as the grubby parts. This condensed narrative packs a lot of power, showing how matrices of marginalization take shape in societies, whether it be due to actual differences or invented ones. These vignettes also have nested stories, past histories revealed as cutoff tales, all narrators veritable Scheherazades. Chapters are mono-focalized, intense, each really delving into the headspace of the viewpoint characters. The reading experience of this book is fleeting as if trying to hold on to an ephemeral moment slipping through the fingers. This short novel is divided into three parts with three chapters each while the first two happen in Paris in July and August of 2010, the third is set in Indochina in 1954-its three chapters are a continuous dialogue, written fully in reported speech. From over there, from the land of the French, you showed me your unabashed contempt once more. "How could you do this to me, Zahira? Forget me completely and, years later, once more humiliate me, crush me, turn me into a faceless man? From far in the past, you returned to destroy what remained of my dignity.
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