Cat's Grin

Founder of leftist magazines Partisans and l'Alternative, author of books opposing French colonialism, Maspero turns to fiction with this semi-autobiographical novel based in the crucial year 194445 for 13-year old Luc (""Cat'') Ponte-Serra. Skinny, spunky Cat idolizes his older brother Antoine, active in the maquis; together they raid for food stamps. But Antoine disappears after shooting German officers, and joins the Allies. Cat's parents are deported. Cared for by relatives, befriended by Diane, a cafe waif who has fled from her bourgeois collaborationist family, Cat fights off the images of horror that assail him as he waits and hunts for those he loves. First-hand accounts of civilian suffering and resistance, the unquenchable fight for a free France in the last year of WW IIboth in Paris and the provincesand unflinching revelations about the death camps make Cat's Grin a moving personal document. (April 30)