cover image The Seine Was Red: Paris, October 1961

The Seine Was Red: Paris, October 1961

Lela Sebbar, , trans. from the French by Mildred Mortimer. . Indiana Univ., $45 (116pp) ISBN 978-0-253-22023-3

First published in France in 1999, Sebbar’s political novel is a significant, self-conscious attempt to shatter the official silence surrounding the October 17, 1961, Algerian demonstration in Paris that ended in bloodshed. Sebbar (Soldats ) sets her novel in contemporary Paris among several Algerian-French families whose elders lived through the events of that fateful day, when violence broke out and demonstrators were beaten, thrown into the Seine, imprisoned (and in some cases deported) by the police. Amel, a young Nanterre University student, is the granddaughter of Algerian immigrants who spent a stretch in La Santé prison for subversive acts. When the curious teenager finally learns the truth about her grandparents, it’s in a documentary film made by her childhood friend, Louis, about La Santé’s role in the Algerian war for independence. Inspired, Amel and a new acquaintance, an Algerian newspaper correspondent, undertake a pilgrimage to various sites in Paris that played important parts in the fight for independence . While Sebbar’s method is sketchy and pointed, the cumulative effect of Amel’s quest to unearth the truth proves moving and cathartic. (Nov.)