978-9933-641-97-9 Summer harvest seasons, the colors of rivers, fish and stones, the warmth of celebrations in a small village, a wheat field facing the ocean, and the gentle touch of a small octopus on a bare foot... images that Le Clezio conjures from his early childhood in the region. Brutani, breathing life into it, with a captivating narration, before moving on to tell about his first encounter with war, hunger, and anxiety in the city of Nice.
In this book, the French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Leclezio goes beyond recounting memories, to approach the war and its lasting impact on his childhood, trying to understand the mysterious void it leaves inside everyone who lived through it, and then deeply explains the cultural and historical nature of the “less fortunate” cities in France, It entangles you in love with cities you have never visited
A special kind of anxiety grips Martin Santome after he approaches retirement age. He sees that his life has passed without him achieving anything worth mentioning. However, something changes after hiring the young woman, Abeyanda, in the office where he works, as he suddenly experiences feelings of happiness. After his life had deprived him of her for many years, since the death of his wife and his having to raise his children alone.
Through Santome's diaries over the course of an entire year, Benedetti depicts for us the life of the middle class in Uruguay, expressing with great sensitivity the loneliness and lack of communication, love, happiness, and death, in a poetic narrative that qualifies this novel to be one of the most beautiful and powerful love novels. And elegance in Latin American literature.
It happens that a story creeps into your depths, shaking you violently and challenging you to turn away from it. This is exactly what happened to me with the story of the Nightingale. The truth is that I did everything in my power not to write this novel, but my research into the subject of World War II led me to the story of the young woman who made an escape route from occupied France, and I could not escape from it. Thus, her story became the starting point, and in reality it is a story of heroism, risk, and unbridled courage. I could not distract myself from her; I kept digging, exploring, and reading, until this story led me to other stories that were no less amazing. It was impossible for me to ignore those stories. Thus, I found myself under the weight of one question haunting me, a question that remains as valid today as it was seventy years ago: Under what circumstances would I risk my life as a wife and mother? More importantly, under what circumstances would I risk my child's life to save a stranger? This question occupies a major position in the novel The Nightingale. In love, we discover who we want to be; In war, we discover who we are. Perhaps sometimes we do not want to know what we can do to survive our lives. In war, women's stories have always been ignored and forgotten. Women usually return home from the battlefields, say nothing, and then move on with their lives. The Nightingale is a novel about these women, and the bold choices they made to save their children and maintain the lifestyle they had become accustomed to. Kristen Hannah
Joan Tatar's memory falters on scenes that Syrians experienced in the laboratory of their torment. It is the slow Syrian time that brings and brings with it in Tatar’s diary the various elements of the experience: starting from the market, to the soldier, to being discharged from it, in a biography that contradicts time, from symbolic death to symbolic birth, in a country that resembles a long dormitory crowded with people. Throughout this cycle of Syrian life, murmurs and stinks are present. Life, as Joan Teter portrays it in this book, is an experiment with low sounds that end in final silence. An experiment with the depths of fear. Is it deeper than we imagined? Is it possible to escape from the fear that has become part of water, and from thirst, part of glut, and part of hunger? Many opposites meet on that distant horizon that made the Syrian dough in the soldier’s laboratory. Were they prisoners or soldiers? Are they condemned or heroes? Everything is equal, all values are equal in that horizon which is the space of Syria, the space of fear and pleas for freedom.
