«فجأة لمحت امرأة تشبه مستورة... ووجدتني أتساءل أين ذهبت؟ ولماذا تصر زوجتي على استرجاعها؟ هل لأنها نشيطة ونظيفة فحسـب؟... أم لأن المرأة لا تحتمل أن تغدر بها امرأة أخرى دون أن تعرف السبب؟
الجزء الأول من الرواية، الذي كان يحكي فيه بطلها داوود، كاتب الروايات الرومانسية، الذي قرر أن يكتب رواية جريمة عن قاتل مُتسلسل، يعرفه في الحقيقة وقد قابله بل وكانا صديقان، وفي نفس الوقت تكون روايته الأخيرة، حيث أنه مريض بالسرطان، وأيامه أصبحت معدودة في الحياة، لنستكشف حياة "داوود" المؤلمة في الحقيقة، بسخرية مُضحكة تجلى
Marie Noël does not know who her father is, nor does she know why her mother abandoned her immediately after her birth and left her in the care of Ranleys, nor does she know what prompted this mother to send a letter ten years later demanding her daughter.
The girl travels into the unknown, living with an emotionally cold mother, tormented by memories of the past. After she grows up, she goes to Boston to complete her studies, and marries an innovative jazz musician, while the question, “Who am I? And who is my family?” continues to haunt her in all the places she lives, and so she seeks to understand what happened before she was born, but a series of dark secrets... And the elusive facts are faced.
In this novel, which won the Prix Carbet de la Caraibe, Maryse Conde writes a tale of lost love and unwanted motherhood, capturing the voice of the Caribbean diaspora with grace and sweetness.
Burdened with noble goals, five young Frenchmen embark on a journey to deliver humanitarian aid to the Kakani region in Bosnia, during the period of civil war, but what began as a dangerous humanitarian mission on a bumpy road in the snow and cold, took a different path that made all their assumptions subject to question and skepticism. What's really in the boxes? Where are they going? What awaits them there on the other end? In addition to having to cross real checkpoints, they will also face more difficult intellectual barriers. What do the victims really need: survival or victory? What must be found: the animal survival instinct that requires only food and housing, or the human sense of dignity that requires means of resistance?
In an interesting and well-paced plot, the French writer Jean-Christophe Ruffin raises very profound questions about humanitarian work: its feasibility, its motives, and how to be truly humanitarian to the fullest extent. These are questions that the novel's characters keep asking themselves, and to each other, throughout a dangerous journey that may change their convictions, and perhaps their destinies, forever.
