Jean-Michel Guenassia

The Incorrigible Optimists Club

Notify me when the book’s added
To read this book, upload an EPUB or FB2 file to Bookmate. How do I upload a book?
Paris, 1959. As dusk settles over the immigrant quarter, 12-year-old Michel Marini – amateur photographer and compulsive reader – is drawn to the hum of the local bistro. From his usual position at the football table, he has a vantage point on a grown-up world – of rock 'n' roll and of the Algerian War. But as the sun sinks and the plastic players spin, Michel's concentration is not on the game, but on the huddle of men gathered in the shadows of a back room…
Past the bar, behind a partly drawn curtain, a group of eastern European men gather, where under a cirrus of smoke and over the squares of chess boards, they tell of their lives before France – of lovers and wives, children and ambitions, all exiled behind the Iron Curtain. Listening to this band of survivors and raconteurs, Michel is introduced to a world beyond the boundaries of his childhood experience, a world of men made formidable in the face of history, ideas and politics: the world of the Incorrigible Optimists Club.
This book is currently unavailable
698 printed pages
Original publication
2014
Publication year
2014
Have you already read it? How did you like it?
👍👎

Quotes

  • Alexander Revinskyhas quoted9 years ago
    I hated wasting my time. The only thing that seemed worthwhile to me was reading. At home, nobody really read. My mother took all year to read the ‘Book of the Year’, which enabled her to talk about it and to pass for a great reader. My father did not read at all and was proud of the fact.
  • kushchenkovahas quoted7 years ago
    Unable to contain himself, he countered with: ‘You’re a petit-bourgeois moralist and you always will be. Like Camus.’
    Cécile seethed. Quite calmly, she retorted: ‘As for you, you’re a pretentious little bugger and you always will be. Like Sartre.’
  • kushchenkovahas quoted7 years ago
    The problem was that Franck swore by Sartre, and Cécile didn’t in the least. She adored Camus. Franck loathed him. I hadn’t yet realized that it was like being for Reims or the Racing Club de Paris, Renault or Peugeot, Bordeaux wine or Beaujolais, the Russians or the Americans, you had to choose which side you were on and stick to it. There must have been one hell of a disagreement between the two men for their voices to rise so sharply. Certain nuances of the exchange

On the bookshelves

fb2epub
Drag & drop your files (not more than 5 at once)