For a long time, I hesitated to buy this graphic novel, which was only available in one of the seven bookshops I regularly visit. In this age of flashy covers and attention-grabbing themes, I found myself faced with this quiet book about the seven lives of a complete stranger. What was I to do?
In the end, I decided to buy it and found it so interesting that I read it in one go. A very nice surprise, although I should have known that the quality would be there when I saw the name of the author, Charles Masson. I had previously read another very interesting graphic novel by this author. The book was entitled “Droit du sol” and dealt with the difficulties experienced by natives in dealing with colonialism.
A page from the graphic novel “Sept vies à vivre”.
“Seven Lives to Live” is an intelligent and humane account of the life of an ordinary man named René. Forget computers and social networks. The reader finds René and his family several decades ago in the Bauges massif, where he spent his childhood and adolescence in the absence of comfort and luxury. The inhabitants toil to survive in this part of the country.
René lost seven siblings in infancy and is determined to live life to the full. He heads down to the valley to change his life. René’s seven lives are the seven great moments that change this man’s destiny. Like so many of us, he was shaken by events. In his case, it’s the Second World War, compulsory military training in France in 1946, chance encounters, and so on. How do you adapt and retain your humanity in the face of life’s surprises?
The script is solid and the graphics interesting. There’s no downtime, which is something to be said for a 225-page story. A great find to add to your library.
The story takes place in 1977 in West Germany. A road accident that claims the lives of a woman and her child attracts the attention of a morgue employee, a man with high standards of professionalism and who is well regarded by his general manager.
This employee is Monsieur Martin, a former soldier who once fought in the Second World War and for whom the word “responsibility” weighs heavily in his existence as an older man. He conducts his own investigation, and naturally upsets people in high positions who have decided to look the other way to preserve their reputations.
Such a theme will always be relevant, as it affects not only German society but all nations across the planet, where individuals who have the most to lose in a given situation choose to disregard their obligations, despite the injustices.
The graphic novel “L’expert” is very well done. I like the drawings, the scenario, the choice of colours, the period and the location where the story takes place. The Germans must certainly have appreciated its publication in 2022.
Novel cover “Dans le ventre de Klara” by Régis Jauffret
[For the presentation of this book published in French, I did my best to translate some sentences in English, but a professional translation would have better reflect the quality of Régis Jauffret’s writing].
“In July 1888, around Saint James’s Day, Uncle made me pregnant”. So begins Régis Jauffret‘s novel “Dans le ventre de Klara” (In Klara’s Belly) , that master of punchlines and synthesis. The Klara in question is Klara Hitler, who at the time of the story is carrying within her an Adolf Hitler already capable of infusing her on occasion with visions of the disaster he would orchestrate years later.
The author has found a unique way to position Klara’s terrible premonitions in the text. They are suddenly imposed in the midst of the mother-to-be’s daily reveries, often right in the middle of a paragraph or sentence.
In this tale of fact and fiction, the wife must stay in her place and hope for nothing. The writer has Klara say: “I’m afflicted with the mania of hoping for something other than my fate“. The husband decides everything. The local church’s confessor would love to have as much control as the spouse, but this proves more difficult than expected. The husband and abbot are a good example of the excessive power they wield over women in this era. A military officer with little combat experience who dictates his conduct to his wife as if she were a soldier, and a fanatical abbot who imposes the arbitrary rules of a sickening religion, enslaving women and imposing his dogmas on couples from a distance.
Back cover of the novel “Dans le ventre de Klara” by Régis Jauffret
Speaking of God and women, the author writes: “A Christian woman must bear children, help to populate the Earth He has given us as a theater for our sins”. And when Klara finds herself back in the confessional and being chastised by the priest: “Far from the voice of Christ gone, it was now Abbé Probst who was busy putting me through the wringer of language. Sentences as long as straps. Words as heavy and blunt as bludgeons. Subtle, sharp words, in places bristling with reddened spikes. Punctuation like broken glass […].” You get the idea…
I particularly appreciate Régis Jauffret’s writing, having read many of his works, including “La ballade de Rikers Island“, “Le dernier bain de Gustave Flaubert“, “Papa” and the three volumes entitled Microfictions, published respectively in 2007, 2018 and 2022. He even won the Goncourt short story award for the 2018 edition.
Régis Jauffret explains the intention behind his latest novel in a video on Youtube, if you’re interested in digging deeper into the subject.
The graphic novel “La disparition de Josef Mengele” is a wonderful surprise for me, both in terms of the scenario and the graphics. Anyone interested in true stories will devour this book as it represents a goldmine of astonishing information on the life, or rather the survival, of the Nazi criminal in Latin America.
Who provides him with the money he needs? How does he protect himself? Does he lead the existence of a pasha? How does he behave abroad? Does his thinking on race show any sign of evolution, or is it still sclerotic? Why does Argentina encourage the arrival of these fugitive assassins?
For the general public, there are two categories of National Socialist criminals: the first concerns the names that received most media coverage at the Nuremberg Tribunal. The second involves Nazi criminals who fled abroad, thanks to political or family support. Josef Mengele belongs to both groups. He is holed up in Latin America and knows that several organizations are seriously looking for him, including Mossad.
How does he remain roaming for so long? It soon becomes clear that the Mossad is not only concentrating on Nazi criminals on the run. The book introduces us to some other priorities for the agency, one of which is very urgent: the elimination of former German scientists working in Egypt to create radioactive waste weapons designed to destroy Israel. The secret services must choose between Mengele, a past threat, or a more immediate danger. With limited resources, they have to adjust and deal with the most pressing situation.
Nazis were integrated into the new German government.
There is, however, a third category that the public has heard very little about, and which is also discussed in the graphic novel: these are Nazis who rejoined the new German government a few years after the end of the Second World War.
Indeed, the Allied powers of the time – the USA, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union – administered the occupation zones of the German territory after the Second World War. But tensions between East and West grew rapidly. Each side accused the other of imperialist or communist expansionism.
To offer a better-organized resistance to the Soviet Union, Germany’s autonomy had to be quickly restored. The former Nazis had experience of governance that was immediately available.
If the Allies adopted the clear-cut position of preventing the Nazis from attaining essential functions in the public apparatus of the future Bonn Republic, then people with little or no knowledge had to be trained to carry out the more complex tasks. Time was short, as was the will to bring all possible war criminals to justice.
So, many Nazis found work in government agencies. One thing led to another, and some of these former Nazis recycled as government agents became part of the inner circle protecting the most prominent war criminals who had fled abroad. Josef Mengele benefited from this high-level support.
But several additional Germans, also in high places, acted in the opposite direction, striving to flush out the biggest criminals, at the risk of their own health and safety. One such person is introduced in the book: Fritz Bauer. This man contacted Mossad with information that eventually help to capture Adolf Eichmann. The latter went on trial in Israel and sentenced to hanging.
Eichmann and Mengele meet each other.
Mengele reads the newspapers and suspects that his end will resemble that of Eichmann. The graphic novel shows him as a hunted animal, talking to himself. His racist, backward-looking words drive away the individuals who could support him most in the last years of his life. He withered slowly and died on a beach in Brazil. But it was not officially known until 1985.
The book covers a period of several decades. It features a brief summary of Mengele’s actions as a doctor at Auschwitz. He is not alone, even if he remains very high-profile to the general public. A large number of scientific assistants carried out experiments on humans, including one who became rector of the University of Münster after the end of the Second World War.
The authors mention in passing the idea of a Fourth Reich pursued by Mengele and his ilk. In short, readers won’t get bored with this skilfully constructed graphic novel.
These machines, which were not designed to operate from an aircraft carrier, would not be able to reach their targets and return safely to port for lack of sufficient fuel. All the pilots were well aware of this, and volunteered.
The fleet of sixteen aircraft, commanded by Jimmy Doolittle, successfully achieved its objective of confusing the enemy and showing that Japan remained vulnerable to surprise attacks. The Japanese wondered how it was possible that American bombers could have reached and hit their country. Where did they take off from? They know that the B-25 Mitchells were not designed to take off from an aircraft carrier, and that they were incapable of landing on one.
The genius of the operation laid in the combination of a number of highly risky decisions which, taken together, took the enemy by surprise. Firstly, as it was impossible to land the planes on the Hornet, they were installed with a crane, knowing full well that they would never return to the ship.
In addition, the captains were trained to take off over distances unthinkable for them, using a technique pushed to the extreme. The ship sailed at high speed into the wind, improving the headwind component so essential for such perilous maneuvers.
The pilots had to be extremely skilful to keep to the departure trajectory on a platform that moved from left to right in the middle of a storm. Buildings on the Hornet’s side had to be avoided at all costs, and the available gap between the wing tip and the ship’s tower was no more than two meters. Despite all the obstacles, all the B-25s managed to take off. It was to be a one-way mission to Japan.
Doolittle piloted the first B-25 to take off from the carrier. He had only a very small portion of the deck to work with, as there were still fifteen other bombers waiting their turn to take off. The second pilot to leave the deck narrowly avoided a water landing, as the aircraft sank slightly and a landing gear wheel touched the water. But the plane gained just enough speed to stay airborne.
Bombers and crews suffered different fates once the bombing raids on Japanese targets had been completed. The authors conclude: “The raid destroyed 112 buildings and killed 87 people, in about 6 minutes. […] The destruction of 15 of the 16 B-25s, unable to reach Chinese airfields for landing, was nevertheless to be deplored, the 16th B-25 having landed safely in the USSR. Also to be deplored was the accidental death of three airmen (planes 3 and 6) and the capture of 8 others (planes 6 and 16) by the Japanese, 4 of whom never returned home, 3 having been executed as “war criminals” and the 4th having died in captivity. Worse still, the Japanese took revenge on the Chinese, who had helped all the surviving airmen, by organizing the massacre of some 250,000 civilians in the Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces then under their control. This was to leave its mark…”.
Landing and takeoff tests on an aircraft carrier, the Forrestal, were also made decades later for a C-130 Hercules. I tried to repeat the experience in flight simulation. The flight can be found in the “challenging virtual flights” section of my blog. As the Forrestal is not available in virtual mode, I used the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.
The great economic crisis of 1929 affected many wealthy families in Quebec City. A decade later, at the time of the Second World War, it was again possible to get rich thanks to the ammunition industry.
The black and white photo above shows the old cartridge factory still standing in Quebec City. In the foreground, an advertisement reminds us that “a picture is worth a thousand words…”. A happy coincidence!
Vladimir Putin‘s war against Ukraine has finally had an unexpected effect: Germany has woken up to its national security and its responsibility to NATO. The Germans have announced that they will now invest massively to equip themselves with military forces worthy of the name. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has spoken of spending around 100 billion euros over the next few years.
Russia’s unwarranted invasion of Ukraine has certainly brought back old memories in Germany. With Operation Barbarossa in 1941, Hitler had attacked Russia by surprise, despite having given his word, resulting in the biggest battle of all time. Millions of people died in this one conflict.
A non-aggression agreement between two countries remains valid only until one of the two partners changes his mind. That is as good as it gets. The Germans showed this to Russia in 1941.
With Russia invading a free country like Ukraine, Germany has realized that it cannot take anything for granted anymore. Today the country is in a vulnerable position and needs to increase its autonomy in the face of a potential attack, especially since most NATO members do not take seriously their responsibility towards military spending.
Moreover, it can no longer really count on the intervention of the United States. American foreign policy and its vision of NATO are now likely to change every four years, depending on whether Trump or one of his allies is elected. This is nothing to secure Europe. Putin put an end to daydreaming.
Click on the link for more articles on geopolitics in my blog.
Both Sorj Chalandon, in his novel “Enfant de salaud”, and Régis Jauffret in “Papa” try to grasp the enigmatic personality of their father. Sorj Chalandon’s father is said to have been a Resistance fighter and a traitor at the same time, while Régis Jauffret’s father is said to have been filmed coming out of a Gestapo interrogation session, terror on his face. Where does the truth lie? Who are these fathers really?
In a previous text, I presented the book “Enfant de salaud”. Now it’s the turn of the novel “Papa” by Régis Jauffret.
As one might expect with Régis Jauffret, the writing style differs radically. The author is the winner of the Goncourt short story prize (2018) for his novel “Microfictions 2018”. His sense of synthesis, black humour and even cynicism makes this return to the father’s past a literary as well as historical adventure. The reader quickly understands that the author takes pleasure in presenting his discoveries. He even adds a bit of fiction when necessary.
True to my habit when it comes to Régis Jauffret, I will present his book through selected quotes. Indeed, the interest of the book lies as much in the content as in the way Régis expresses himself to enlighten his subject. Here are a few quotes (translated as best as possible) that may help to grasp the tone of the book:
“I took communion.
Someone pointed out to me on the way out that I wasn’t a believer.
– That’s right, a wafer or chips.
I smiled, but after this blasphemy I was not very happy. When you have been educated religiously, you always keep the terror of God in the back of your mind”.
“He had just had a stroke which, far from handicapping him, seemed to have cheered him up”.
“She told me that the moisture had blown away the veneer [of the coffin]. All that was left was a box of blackened boards. I wasn’t in a good enough mood to call the funeral home lady to invoke the eternal guarantee that such metaphysical products undoubtedly enjoy”.
“One of those happy memories that make you feel good that you never went to a gun shop to buy something to shoot yourself in the head”.
“Alfred was instructed to clench his teeth during coitus without sighing, while she remained as stoic as when the dentist teased one of her molars with the tip of his drill without anesthesia”.
“Through the vast copper bell of a gramophone perched on a pedestal whose statue had been stolen, Édith Piaf shouted ‘J’ai dansé avec l’amour’ (I danced with love) while the cries of the martyrs rose from the basement”.
“Writing about oneself is a form of incontinence”.
“We are condescending to deaf people without status or talent, but we prefer to deal with them sparingly. When you haven’t seen them soon enough to have hidden behind a construction machine or a bulky man, you greet them from afar as you walk away”.
“If I had not seen these images, you would have remained in the sewers of my memory”.
“If I last as long as Madeleine, I will be a centenarian who will unexpectedly ruminate on his father in his dried-up brain like a currant while an orderly built like a colossus swings my emaciated body in the air to change my diaper”.
“Pitiful descendant of protozoa that have become multicellular beings with brains, humanity has no reason to show off”.
“It is heroic in times of war to assume the role of the executioner, even if it means being wrong sometimes, because in extreme situations doubt never benefits the accused”.
“He talked from morning to night. Anyone he met on the street was showered with language like a careless person on a pier on a stormy day by a surge of water. In his office, everyone was soaked. So much so that people ran away from him, but he always managed to find someone who was kind enough to let himself be flooded”.
“I never heard him talk about his day either. The weather had been fine, it had snowed, it had rained, a chamois had crossed the trail in a tail, a man hit by a storm had burst into flames, a lady had fallen into a crevasse while singing a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach”.
“During this time, Jean-Jacques and Honoré undertook the sisters red as blue meat to find themselves in the presence of two boys whose pants in the fashion of the time moulded the genital apparatus of which they dreaded in advance the sting”.
“Enfant de salaud” means “Bastard’s child” in English. Author Sorj Chalandon is a journalist and worked for decades for the French newspapers Liberation and Canard Enchaîné. During his career, he received numerous awards: Albert-Londres (1988), Médicis (2006), Grand Prix de l’Académie française (2011), Goncourt des lycéens (2013) and most recently Goncourt 2021 des lecteurs de 20 Minutes.
“Enfant de salaud” is the true story of the author who tries to shed light on his father’s extremely nebulous past during World War II, in the German-occupied France.
Having had access to official archives, he gradually discovers that his father went through the war by enlisting in five armies, which he all deserted. He served the enemy in every way, but always made sure that the few things he was doing for Francewere listed somewhere in case of an investigation after the war.
The head of the Sûreté nationale de Lille who questioned the father after the war said of him: “This individual is a liar endowed with an astonishing imagination. He must be considered very dangerous and treated as such.”
Between the reflections and the discoveries of the son on the past and the psychology of the father, the reader participates in parallel to the trial of Klaus Barbie , psychopath and great war criminal, who died in prison in France in 1991. Passages of the book are blood curdling, although we know what to expect when it comes to Nazis, SS and members of the Gestapo.
When the survivor Isaac Lathermann takes the stand during the Barbie trial, he announces: “[in the concentration camps], at breast height, there was no more bark on the trees, everything had been eaten. No more grass either. Eaten too.” (p. 238)
The reader discovers the resistant Lise Lesèvre who, even tortured by Klaus Barbie for days, doesn’t give up a single name: a phenomenal example of courage and patriotism.
“Enfant de salaud” is the author’s decades-long inner journey. The fact that he relates a real-life story further reinforces the intensity of the narrative.
While searching high and low in various bookstores in Quebec, I often make very interesting discoveries. I recently found a book by Robert Seethaler, originally published in German under the title of ,, Ein ganzes Leben ” and which in English is translated by “A whole life“.
It is a small book of only 145 pages, but the concise writing has the power to immediately propel the reader into the early 1900s, in the middle of the Austrian mountains. It was the period when the construction of the first cable cars began, a period that would change the whole dynamic of the society by gradually allowing more and more tourists to occupy a territory that was once sparsely inhabited.
The author tells the story of Andreas Egger, a simple and endearing man whose strength of character allows him to stand up to any ordeal. He is not distinguished by his intelligence, which is quite ordinary, but rather by his ability to survive and his desire to always move forward. He is a human being that we love and wish only good for.
Here is what the publisher said about Robert Seethaler: “A whole life, elected book of the year (2014) by bookstores across the Rhine, thus confirms the depth of his talent as a writer, capable of leading with great simplicity his reader as close as possible to his emotions”.
