Surviving A Massacre—Catherine Meurisse And Art’s Curative Power

Catherine Meurisse

Yesterday marked the 6-year anniversary of the savage terrorist attack on the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo. That morning, two gunmen killed 12 members of Charlie Hebdo’s staff and left 11 injured. I wrote about one of the courageous survivors, Coco, back in 2017. The word courageous, however, doesn’t do…

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Suite Française, historic novel and tragic account of the woman who wrote it

Book cover of Suite Française

I recently read Suite Française, a poignant novel by Irene Némirovsky that would have remained hidden from history were it not for the courageous actions of her daughter, Denise Epstein. In 2004, sixty-two years after Némirovsky’s death in Auschwitz, Suite Française appeared in French libraries for the first time. It…

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The Puzzling Mind of Patrick Modiano

Patrick Modiano, 2014

Last year, when Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize in literature, I had never heard of him.  It’s not surprising.  None of my friends, many of whom who are far more well-read than I, had heard of him either.  As it turns out, not many of his works had been translated…

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