Un aller simple

by Van Cauwelaert Didier

Other, 1994

Status

Available

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

Albin Michel (1994), Edition: Albin Michel, 195 pages

Description

Winner of the Prix Goncourt and chosen by The Seattle Times as one of the Best Books of 2004 "One-Way is a funny and tender look at a world of shifting boundaries...Aziz Kemal is a protagonist for these times." -Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land "Outrageously funny." -The Seattle Times "Mr. van Cauwelaert has a fine, light touch and makes Aziz the most charming and gentle of liars." -The New York Sun "A mad tale, funny and cruel, tender and inventive, in which all the hypocrisy of our society is put forward without ever becoming heavy-handed." -Les Echos Hailed as a marvel and awarded France's most prestigious literary prize, One-Way recounts the comic, absurd, and all-too-believable adventures of Aziz Kemal, a young Frenchman raised as an Arab by Marseilles gypsies. Arrested for a crime he didn't commit, Aziz becomes the target of a government campaign to repatriate illegal immigrants and finds himself en route to Morocco, despite the fact that he isn't Moroccan. Accompanying Aziz is a touchingly naive and neurotic "humanitarian attache" named Jean-Pierre Schneider, who drowns his own personal woes in his zeal to build a new life for his charge in a land neither one has ever seen. It is on the plane to Morocco that events take an unexpected turn, when Aziz, pressed for details of a "birthplace" that isn't his, invents the fabulous story of Irghiz, a valley paradise hidden from the world and now in danger of ruin. From this moment on, the attache forgets his original assignment and has only one mission: to return Aziz to the Eldorado he left behind and save it from the ravages of modern progress. So begins an initiatory journey that takes Aziz, Jean-Pierre, and a disabused aristocrat across a desert both real and mythic, pursuing a vision of happiness as elusive as Irghiz itself. At once humorous and poignant, the story of this journey is "a beautifully realized blend of sensitivity, humor, intelligence, and good sense—a rich and engaging novel, filled with a lucid and compassionate humanity" (Jean-Claude Lebrun).… (more)

Media reviews

The Believer

A smart and serious little book about identity and immigration, tourism and the exotic, the politics of the global economy, the power of narrative, and that elusive, illusory, and generally untrustworthy character: the authentic. It is also extremely funny.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Paulagraph

Un Aller Simple is a slim novel(120 pages)that tracks a Marsaillais orphan of unknown origins, rescued and raised by a group of Roms after his parents are killed in a traffic accident. His new family gives him the name Aziz (after Ami 6, the model of auto from which he is rescued)and bequeath him

with false identification papers that transform him into a non Arabic-speaking Moroccan immigrant. He makes a living stealing car radios and courts his childhood Rom sweetheart, Lila. His fondest memories (and the highpoint of his young life) are of the few years he spent in school, especially in the class of a M. Giraudy, who, when Aziz is forced to quit school, gives him an atlas called Legends of the World, which Aziz reads and rereads and which is the one possession that he regrets when, moments before his marriage to Lila, he is snatched by the police on a false charge of jewelry theft. Instead of jail, Aziz is deported to Morocco in the company of an attache named Jean-Pierre Schneider, himself a refugee of sorts from a family of displaced foundry workers in Lorraine, to be repatriated to and economically reinserted in his "home" country as a good-will gesture on the part of the French government. Aziz spins a tale for Jean-Pierre (and finds his true vocation as a storyteller)that sets them off on a quest for Irghiz and the Valley of the Grey Men in the Atlas mountains. Their guide is a young Moroccan-French woman named Valerie who is cynical and fatalistic about both love and life. Much (or not much really) ensues as this tragicomic fairytale brings Aziz finally to yet another adopted home, that of Jean Pierre's parents in a factory town in Lorraine. There Aziz moves into Jean Pierre's childhood room and into his childhood and sets about writing Jean Pierre's novel(titled Un Aller Simple) or the story of Aziz as written by Aziz as Jean Pierre's replacement. The first third of the novel which recounts Aziz's life in Marseille is arguably the most interesting. The subsequent adventure that begins in Morocco and ends in Lorraine is simply unconvincing, even when considered as a legend or fairy tale.

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LibraryThing member mbarylak

Many new, interesting points of view. Liked it.

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