Our selection of 3 powerful novels not to be missed

“The Prior of Bethlehem”, by Yasmina Khadra

Ed. Flammarion, 272 p.; €21.

It is with enthusiasm and passion that the immense Algerian novelist Yasmina Khadra, who so poetically knows how to link small and big History, tells us the intimacy of a Palestinian family. This new novel begins as a thriller and turns into a tragedy, superbly embodied, masterfully written.

Alexandre Yakovlevoi, a Parisian publisher, is kidnapped by a man who has gone berserk because his manuscript has not been read. His name is brother Wahid, he is a monk. He reads to his hostage the work confession to which he attaches existential importance.

With a Christian mother and a Muslim father, he grew up in the West Bank, with his uncle. In love with his young cousin Nesreen, he loved listening to his cousin Adem play the lute, running down the hill to see Zev, the Jewish hermit who lives among birds and books, or taking advice from the wise Shaheen.

But after the Sabra and Chatila massacres in 1982, as the bulldozers approached, Adem joined a militant group. Wahid, for his part, befriends a Jewish idealist before returning to his maternal family and meeting Baptiste…

There are dramas, betrayals, disappointments, unanswered appeals to heaven – or not the ones we expect. We do not emerge unscathed from this powerful novel which depicts, from the Nakba – the exodus of the Palestinians after Israel’s victory in the 1948 war – to Gaza, a dark night for humanity.

Muriel Fauriat

Our opinion: PPP