Our selection of 8 books on the Second World War
My resistance
The name on the wall, by Hervé Le Tellier, Ed. Gallimard, 176 pp. ; €19.80.
At first, it’s an inscription on a wall. In his Drôme house, the novelist Hervé Le Tellier discovers a name engraved in the plaster: André Chaix. He forgot it, then found it a little later on the war memorial in the village square, accompanied by the dates 1924-1944. Because André was one of the 13,679 FFI (French Interior Forces) killed at the end of the war.
From archives and personal objects, the 2020 Goncourt Prize gives flesh to the missing: his tunes of Jean Gabin, his learning of ceramics, his love at first sight for Simone, his meeting with the author of Jules and Jim …And suggests that, behind the figure of the hero who seems unattainable, there is a simple man at the dawn of his existence, ready for all the impulses, for all the flashes. A being determined to “never give in to the idea of the inferiority of others (…), supreme loyalty to what makes us human”.
Our opinion: PPP
