“Striking the epic”. Alice Zeniter. Flammarion. 345 pages. €22.
What do we know about distant New Caledonia? Not much. Curiosity is awakened when the Caillou emerges from the hinges of general indifference to recall the memory of the metropolis. It happened in 1988 at the time of the events in Ouvéa, then again in recent months of riots born from the vagueness left by three self-determination referendums. A coincidence of the life of letters and current events, Alice Zeniter’s novel appears at the right time.
Around the character of Tas, the winner of the Goncourt des lycéens in 2017 with “The Art of Losing”, beats the reminder of an epic which embraces the colonial history of the archipelago until reaching a more personal echo of which it delivers the keys in its final chapters.
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So here is Tas, a high school teacher, who was brought back to Nouméa by a romantic breakup coupled with a desire to return to her native land after years of living away in mainland France. Troubled by the disappearance of two of her students, Kanak twins, the teacher decides to go in search of the two runaways linked to a small independence group which prefers “violent empathy” to radical subversive actions. Their revolt simmers a project with both poetic and political symbolism.
The exploration of the Caillou in the footsteps of the twins promises Tass the understanding of a complex territory where over the last centuries, traces of the penal colony desired by Paris, the boom in the exploitation of nickel mines in the 1970s and the pages of the origins of the inhabitants, a marker of identity(ies) of this South Pacific archipelago. But little by little, the threads of the past draw the pattern of the losers of History. When we achieve independence, most Kanaks will live like whites. We will give them back their land and they will no longer know how to live on it.
predicts one of the characters.
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The novel thus probes the depth of time, notes the imperceptible changes in Caledonian society such as the regular departure of the “metros” (there are 2,000 of them leaving the archipelago each year), questions the legitimacy in the shadow of the relationships of power between communities. Under the excitement of the senses born from the beauty of the island, a map of New Caledonia takes shape which gives its full place to the Kanak population. The way Alice Zeniter adjusts her gaze reveals the gaps in memories since on this colonized land, history was written by the victors. With a touch of magic, the virtuoso story ultimately connects the Great Land of the South Pacific to other wounded genealogies.
