“Homelessness”, by Annette Wieviorka, ed. Albin Michel, 592 p., €25.90, digital €18.
Maybe you shouldn't read the back covers. In any case, skip the oneRoamingby Annette Wieviorka, a piece of bravery from a publisher who believes he must mask the true nature of the book. No, the historian does not tell her life story there “following the flow of memories”. These are not Memoirs: it is a collection of nearly forty-five articles published since the beginning of the 1980s, on all the subjects she has tackled – the history and memory of the Shoah, the worlds missing Jews, the fights for justice and against negationism, communism…
It is true that, grouped into nine themes, or rather nine places which crystallize them, from the Paris Shoah Memorial to Auschwitz or Jerusalem, these texts are preceded, at the opening of each chapter, by a prelude where Annette Wieviorka today is embarking on a “form of professional introspection”as she writes in the introduction. But it is all the Annette Wieviorkas accumulated over forty years that occupy most of the volume. This is what makes it fascinating from start to finish, especially since each of these articles offers simple, concise access to the different knowledge covered, and the publisher would not have made the book less attractive if it had promoted it for what it is: an introduction to one of the most striking historical works of our time.
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