In his hilarious new novel, Indians have fun, author Thomas King, of Cherokee ancestry, features an elderly couple who fly from Canada to travel to Europe. If the bubbly Mimi is determined to follow in the footsteps of an ancestor who once visited Prague, the grumpy Bird is rather stuck with his demons, so present that they have names.
“Maybe you should make some friends.” Maybe you would spend less time with your demons,” says Mimi to her beloved, a Cherokee and Greek photojournalist. During their stay in the Czech Republic, the duo hopes to find a bag of family souvenirs that Uncle Leroy may have lost there a hundred years earlier. However, Bird’s torments continue to resurface in this quest.
The protagonist has within him a character named “Eugene” who represents self-hatred, as is the case for “all Native people in North America”, Mimi’s mother, Bernie, once said. It was the latter, a Blackfoot from Alberta, who instilled in the couple the desire to follow in the footsteps of their ancestor Leroy, who had left his reserve in Canada to cross the Old Continent.
The Ontario novelist, to whom we owe in particular The awkward Indian (2014), once again succeeds in tackling serious themes, such as intergenerational trauma, while peppering his story with quips worthy of a comedian.
Catherine Ego, who translated this work from English to French, does justice to the efficient writing of Thomas King. As usual, the writer strings together rhythmic dialogues which feature a host of endearing, but sometimes exasperating, characters.
Bird, who is in pain as much in body as in soul, constantly delivers his bizarre reflections on the discomforts that travel entails. “You have to be immortal to eat pizza,” he thinks, sitting at a table in a Czech restaurant where young people stuff themselves without fearing that the processed meat will block their arteries.
Running after dead or missing people
With Indians have funThomas King delivers a road novel crazy where geographic and temporal leaps multiply between Canada, the United States, Greece, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
Throughout his wanderings to find Uncle Leroy, but also his own father, Bird nevertheless asks himself this question: “How is it that I spend my time chasing dead or missing men? »
Throughout their adventures, however, the couple is hit hard when they come across a horde of refugees in a Hungarian train station. New questions then arise. “How many times have we turned a blind eye to injustice? Averted our gaze in the face of intolerance? » asks Bird about his journey to this continent.
The photojournalist also comes to consider Uncle Leroy as a refugee who fled the constraints of his reserve and racism in Canada by going to Europe. He was “dragged from one country and one language to another, without a fixed address,” he concludes.