The Past Ahead. Gilbert Gatore
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Название: The Past Ahead

Автор: Gilbert Gatore

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Историческая литература

Серия: Global African Voices

isbn: 9780253009500

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ

      THE

      PAST

      AHEAD

      GLOBAL AFRICAN VOICES

      Dominic Thomas, editor

      THE

      PAST

      AHEAD

      A NOVEL

       GILBERT GATORE

      TRANSLATED BY

      MARJOLIJN DE JAGER

image

      This book is a publication of

      Indiana University Press

      601 North Morton Street

      Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA

      iupress.indiana.edu

      Telephone orders 800-842-6796

      Fax orders 812-855-7931

      © 2012 by Indiana University Press

      First published in French as Le passé devant soi © Éditions Phébus, Paris, 2008

      This work, published as part of a program providing publication assistance, received financial support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange).

      All rights reserved

      No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

      image The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Gatore, Gilbert, [date]

      [Passé devant soi. English]

      The past ahead : a novel / Gilbert Gatore ; translated by Marjolijn de Jager.

      p. cm. — (Global African voices)

      Includes bibliographical references.

      ISBN 978-0-253-00665-3 (cl : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-00666-0 (pb : alk. paper)

      ISBN 978-0-253-00950-0 (eb)

      I. De Jager, Marjolijn. II. Title.

      PQ2707.A86P3713 2012

      843′.92—dc23

      2012015756

      1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13 12

      To my parents,

      to Pierre and Maddy Le Bas,

      thank you.

      I have broken an order, and the guilty are never bored.

      —J.-M. COETZEE, IN THE HEART OF THIS LAND

       What better is there to be done when there’s no doubt whatsoever that it’s too late?

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      The translator wishes to express her sincere gratitude to Dee Mortensen, senior editor at Indiana University Press, and to Dominic Thomas, professor of French & Francophone studies at University of California, Los Angeles, for their unswerving encouragement and support for the translation of Gilbert Gatore’s novel. Without such enthusiasm for and faith in the importance of francophone African literature, works such as these would remain unknown to the large audience that is waiting to discover these voices.

      I am equally grateful to the French Embassy’s program of French Voices, which has supported this publication with the generosity of its funding.

      And, as always, warm gratitude goes to David Vita, my first and acutely critical reader, without whose daily presence and support my work would be much more difficult.

      INTRODUCTION

      Phébus, his French publisher, provides us with the following biographical information: “Gilbert Gatore was born in Rwanda in 1981. On the eve of the civil war, his father gave him The Diary of Anne Frank to read. Profoundly moved, the young boy decided, like the heroine, to keep a diary throughout the conflict. When he fled the country with his family in 1997, Zairian customs officers took everything they had, including the precious notebooks. Ever since, he has tried to recover the strength and truth of those emotions in his writing.” By keeping a diary, suffering was made endurable both for Anne Frank and, generations later, for Gilbert Gatore. (On a personal level, for a woman whose origin is Dutch and who herself has rather vivid childhood memories of World War II, it is particularly moving to learn that Gatore’s earliest inspiration came from Anne Frank.)