In this thought-provoking and often enigmatic novel, Abdourahman Waberi reflects on the series of horrors – political, economic, religious, and environmental – which have dominated Djibouti in recent years, using five different speakers, each of whom comments on his life, past and present, often switching back and forth within a single monologue. The novel opens at Roissy Airport (Charles de Gaulle), where Bashir Assoweh, an uneducated, adolescent veteran of Djibouti’s civil war is hoping for admission into France, and asylum. Drafted to fight for his government against rebels, he has now been demobilized but never paid for his efforts. The war is over – “a tie game” – but he no longer has a home or family to return to, forced to spend his nights camping out in a tent beside the water, carousing with other young veterans, committing minor robberies, and smoking dope. Standing at Roissy, beside a middle-aged intellectual named Harbi, who will almost certainly be granted asylum because he has been an active opponent of the regime of Ali Arif, Bashir is assumed to be Harbi’s son. Neither of them corrects the French at Immigration. Abdo-Julien, Harbi’s real son, is not with Harbi, his whereabouts unclear, and Alice, Harbi’s French wife, is also not present. As the novel unfolds through monologues by five different speakers, the horrors of Djibouti’s recent history unfold.
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Could the bottle of Lafite, with the initials of Thomas Jefferson and dated 1787, then sitting on a pedestal at Christie’s auction house, possibly have been part of a newly discovered Nazi hoard? On December 5, 1987, Michael Broadbent, the head of the wine department of Christie’s, readied himself to auction off this bottle, the oldest authenticated bottle of red wine ever to come up for auction at Christie’s. He knew its provenance was crucial, as it would certainly become the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold. A section of the Old Marais district in Paris had recently been torn down, and some wondered if it could have been found walled up in some basement to avoid theft. Others suggested that it had a Nazi history. Then again, Thomas Jefferson had sent hundreds of cases of wine home to Monticello (and some to George Washington) when he left his job as Minister to France to become the Secretary of State, and one of these cases may have been lost or stolen. Auction excitement was high, and rumors were rife because of the age and importance of this bottle, not just for its qualities as wine but also because it was an important historical artifact. The story of this bottle expands into an examination of the elite wine market from 1987 – the present. Exciting non-fiction.
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A fast-paced plot, a setting that is both horrific and familiar, a mixture of fantasy with traditional religion, and unusual characters dealing with pressing political, economic, and moral issues capture one’s attention from the opening pages, as author Michele Roberts keeps the reader moving swiftly through the French countryside from 1931 – 1945. In many ways the two girls who are the protagonists of this novel represent the dichotomies of their times. Jeanne will do whatever is necessary to survive, including stealing food from the convent, and later taking jobs which demean her. Marie-Angele and her family, for all their religiosity, consider themselves superior because they are wealthier, and these hypocritical attitudes are also reflected, ironically, in the attitudes Jeanne experiences with the nuns in the convent. Though Jeanne is the primary narrator, Marie-Angele also serves as a narrator, expressing her own versions of events and her own attitudes toward life, and the two reflect very different realities which also reflect the realities of France during this period. Because time is not linear in this novel, the author is able to paint a picture of life from several different vantage points, not just in point of view but also in time. Sure to become an immense popular success not just for its story but for its style, this novel will surely appeal to a wide audience. Recommended for book clubs.
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Shortly after World War I, Philippe Marcenat is writing a journal trying to explain to his second wife, Isabelle, his personally devastating past life with Odile, his first wife. He believes that if the quiet and accommodating Isabelle can only understand his life with the vivacious and exciting Odile, that Isabelle will be even more understanding of his often thoughtless behavior during their own marriage. Starting his journal in the years immediately following World War I, Philippe reflects the pomposity and vanity with which he, and others of his time and class often treat the women in their lives. Though he wants to be honest, Philippe is limited by his own attitudes and those of his culture, however. He is unable to identify with women in any meaningful way, except as property, and is at a loss to understand why the most beautiful woman he has ever met – his first wife, Odile – has abandoned him for another. Isabelle’s story begins halfway through the novel. As Isabelle reveals their post-war courtship and marriage from her own point of view, the true nature of the marriage and the respective limitations of the two characters become even clearer. “What I want from love,” Isabelle remarks “is a warm, caressing climate, something my family refused me.” The novel, aided by the new translation, moves swiftly and smoothly through time, revealing much about the culture of France between the two wars.
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In one of the most stimulating novels I have read in many years, Djibouti author Abdourahman A. Waberi, now living in France, explores issues of crucial contemporary importance while examining the history of religious extremism and how young people are drawn to it. He does this within the context of an intriguing, often poetic, novel which contains mysteries, a spy narrative, secret identities, a writer speaking from the grave, and a mystical, real-time connection between two characters who never meet during the narrative. Though I was glued to the pages of this short novel, I am still thinking of all the mysteries raised here for which, intentionally, the author offers no easy answers as he takes the reader in new directions.
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