- If we say America, you think of the great outdoors, road trips, but also perhaps cinema and New York City. A country as fascinating as it is confusing and whose excessiveness never ceases to amaze, the United States has produced and still produces genius writers. Focus on 16 books - from novel to essay - which each in their own way tell America and its inhabitants.
- 1. Beloved, by Toni Morrison (10/18)
- Inspired by a news item from 1856, Beloved unearths the horror and madness of a painful past. A former slave, Sethe killed the child she cherished in the name of love and freedom, so that she could escape a fate of bondage. A few years later, the ghost of Beloved, the missing little girl, painfully returns to haunt her guilty mother.
- Far from all clichés, Toni Morrison revives memory and transcends the pain of the oppressed. Pulitzer Prize in 1988, Beloved is a great violent and heartbreaking novel.
- Translated from English (United States)
- by Hortense Chabrier
- and Sylviane Rué
- 2. Little Rock 1957, by Thomas Snégaroff
- Little Rock, 1957: the story of the nine black high school students who turned America upside down
- STORY
- The photo of one of the Nine, Elizabeth Eckford, 15, booed and insulted, made headlines the next day. America is in turmoil. Then begins a standoff between the Governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus and the President of the United States Dwight Eisenhower. Thomas Snégaroff, an expert on the United States, went there to investigate this major episode in the history of the struggle for equal rights. Thanks to unpublished testimonies and public archives used for the first time, he gives us a captivating and moving story that paints a portrait of America yesterday and today.
