Two strangers in the cemetery of Pantin. They know each other a little. The son is discrete ; the father is secret. The first buries the second. It rains on the graves. François Zohar comes to say goodbye to the Zohar the Zohar. His father left when he was barely two years old. The tombs are closed-they are forever on the mystery of the beings ? The father came into contact with the son, in 2014, a short time before turning off. One was an old man of eighty-nine years old and the other was on its fifty years. They are little entrusted to us. François Zohar meets Livia Iacopetti. A friend of her father, a woman of memory. François Zohar visits it regularly, in Neuilly, to hear him speak of Zohar the Zohar. It will help the living son of reconstructing the past of the father's death. What lessons can we hear it ? The novelist and psychologist Tobie Nathan, born in 1948 in Cairo, Egypt, in a jewish family, wrote a huge novel about what we inherit and what we make of it.
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Zohar Zohar was born in 1925 to a jewish family in egypt. He grew up in the jewish quarter disinherited of old Cairo. King Farouk is in power. Zohar Zohar trace his route and is successful in business. Corruption and violence spread everywhere in the egyptian society, without the possibility of return to normal. The rise of the muslim brotherhood, the presence of former nazis in the various workings of power, hatred and murder of jews. "If Farouk called for hatred of the jew to find favor in the eyes of his people, the Brethren were of one-upmanship, pounding in their preaching that it was the sacred duty of every muslim to eliminate every jew he met. As to the army, it piaffait in his boots waiting to take his revenge against the Jews. "The defeat of egypt, during the arab-israeli war of 1948, is in all the heads. The street is boiling. Lieutenant-colonel Gamal Abd el-Nasser, the founder of the Movement of free officers, overthrew king Farouk in July 1952. Zohar Zohar is pursued by the nazis. He fled his country and landed in Naples. From its first steps in Europe, Zohar Zohar meets Livia Iacopetti. He settled in France.
Sex and revenge
France wants to forget her past. Zohar is befriended by Aaron (a survivor of the ghetto of Wilno) and Lucien (a French resistant). They set up a fur trade. Zohar Zohar is haunted by the figure of Didier Boehm. An ideologue nazi and a war criminal who tortured his mother in Egypt. Zohar Zohar intends to honour the promise made to the Society of beautiful people, assembly of women in a popular district of Cairo, and does not forget where he comes from. The trio of friends is joined by Paulette. They are bound by the sex. They speak of forgiveness, they speak of loyalty. They speak about repentance, they speak of vengeance. Zohar Zohar falls under the spell of Mary Desnoyel. They have one child. They named him Francis. The sentence of De Gaulle on "a people of the elite, sure of itself, and domineering" is a thunderclap for many of the Jews of France. We are in 1967. Zohar Zohar disappears. He leaves behind a wife and a boy.
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Tobie Nathan pays tribute to the children of the people. The Company of beautiful people, historical fresco where one crosses the king Farouk and the lieutenant-colonel Nasser, tells the story of the anonymous swept away by the Story. In a lively style, colorful, the author of This country who looks like you brings to life the popular districts of Cairo and Paris. A life of resourcefulness and solidarity. The figures of women are many. Livia (former prostitute and friend of choice), Thalia (journalist charged with spying on the Egyptians for the account of the Jews of Palestine), Paulette (loose woman living in Paris with Zohar, Aaron and Lucian), Mary (the mother of Francis, relinquished by the Zohar). Great scenes egyptian around the Kudiya, officiating respected and mistress of the spirits, shot by a firing machine gun. The funeral gives rise to a rebellion of joy. The portrait of king Farouk is a success. "A strange metamorphosis in reverse, from the fairy tales, the handsome prince with clear eyes had turned into a monster of nightmare. "The anger of the street is stirred up by the propaganda of the muslim brotherhood and the communists. The author perfectly shows the disconnect between the elites and the people. And what's been happening.
Start over or repeat ?
All the history, between Cairo and Paris, revolves around the memory of intimate and collective. How anti-semitism has resurfaced in a crisis, how demagogues manipulate the anger of the peoples for their own benefit, how one inherits child greater than oneself, how one retains vitality in the face of adversity. The author's book to be a reflection caustic and disturbing about revenge, honor, debt, loyalty. Can we aspire to a new life ? It is believed to go back, we stare. It is believed to start again, it repeats. A certainty rooted, nothing can be built on forgetting. The discrete François Zohar, born in 1965 in Paris, inherits from the hustle and bustle of the past. He will be able to take the sorrows and the joys.
The Company of beautiful people, of Tobie Nathan, Stock, 420 pages, 22 euros (in bookstores on August 9,)
