"A moving tale not to be missed, from the pen of a beautiful story-teller. An unlikely pair are flung together by chance each on a quest for truth."
Classic stuff with Paris very much at its centre. Although set in the present, the past echoes through it as various people brush up against history, politics and atrocities.
Our main characters are a 19-year old, illegal, Moroccan immigrant, Tariq, and a lonely, middle-aged American academic, Hannah, bruised by a love affair in Paris ten years earlier. Tariq works in a fried chicken shop with a couple of Algerians who discuss the brutality of the French in the war of independence.
This echoes the interviews Hannah is transcribing for her research about women under German occupation. A quirk of fate allows Tariq to become Hannah’s lodger and then translator. Although a comparatively short book, at under three hundred pages, there is a huge amount within it. Faulks is without a doubt an impressive novelist. This is a must-read.
Featured in Episode 5 of the LoveReading Podcast
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
| Recommendations: |
Yet another #1 from the excellent Sebastian Faulks – deep, multi-layered story blending the historic past with modern day Paris.
Hannah and Tariq could not be more different. She is 31 year old PhD researcher in Paris to source material for a book about women resistance fighters during the war. He is a 19 year old runaway from Morocco who is in Paris to find out more about a mother he hardly knew.
What unites them both are ghosts from their past. She is still trying to move forward from a failed relationship 10 years previously in Paris and he is haunted by a mother who spent part of her life in Paris – a part he never knew. In addition, Paris is brought to life with reference to its history - WWII and the historic relationship between France and Algeria.
In confronting their past both gain a better understand of who they are today.... Read Full Review
A brilliant, complex, engrossing novel about two strangers in Paris who find echoes from the past which enable them to discover more about history and themselves.
This is one of those rare novels that tells you something new about the past, is complex and thought-provoking and yet also is a good, enjoyable story.
The two main characters are Hannah, an American researching the experiences of women in Paris during the German Occupation, and Tariq, a young Moroccan wanting to find out more about his dead mother. Another main character is Paris itself, not the Paris of tourists but that of blocks of concrete flats in the suburbs and also the Paris of two historical periods - WW2 and the Algerian War.
Paris changes both Hannah and Tariq. She moves on from the heartbreak of a past love affair and he explores what identity means to him and what is really important in his life.... Read Full Review
American academic, Hannah and Moroccan student, Tariq are both in Paris hoping to deal with echoes of the past. But there are many ways to take their first steps into the future.
This is a story which places the reader alongside the two main characters, learning with them and rooting for them.
Hannah's research into the experiences of French women under the German occupation of World War II takes her into a complicated and chequered national history.
Tariq, escaping from what he sees as the restrictions of Moroccan student routines, finds himself embroiled in areas of Parisian life which a tourist never sees.... Read Full Review
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