The virtuous is in the vein of What the day owes the night, masterpiece of the most famous Algerian writer in France. A great novel where personal stories tell the great story. Breath, Yasmina Khadra has it. And it takes some to write this fresco which very accurately describes Algeria at the beginning of the 20th century, which began on the eve of the First World War. Breath and imagination. Yasmina Khadra, Mohammed Moulessehoul for civil status, confirms with The virtuous that he remains a formidable storyteller. “This is my most beautiful text”, told the author of Morituri to Franceinfo. A great popular novel, in the noblest sense of the term.
It all starts with a fool’s bargain. Yacine, a very poor young shepherd, is offered a pact by a caïd: he leaves for France to go to war in place of his son in exchange for a farm for his parents. In a feudal society, the caïd “was in the image of the good Lord. He could make a rascal a notable and an insolent a gallows game, except that he was more inclined to punish than to gratify”. And here is young Yacine in the trenches instead of Hamza’s son. Four years fighting against “the Boches” and trying to survive. His return, Yacine imagined it as a promise of better days. But he, the hero, was expected to disappear so that the usurper could come into full view. He had to die so that Hamza, the kingpin’s son, would be born in broad daylight, crowned with war medals.
The market turns into a nightmare, an endless flight. And this is where Yasmina Khadra questions destiny. How to write it? With blood, revenge? Going a completely different path? Thus, back in Algeria, the young Yacine matures, rubs shoulders with violence, faces destitution. During his journey, he reconnects with some of his former war companions, the Turcos, these Algerian skirmishers who served in the French army. He finds himself embarked with the suspicious separatist Zorg in a desperate rebellion, binds again with Sid the hedonist, in search of redemption, who is drowning in alcohol or even Raho, mellowed by the trials of the life and… a form of stoic happiness. Trials, Yacine accumulates them, bathes in them. The rare moments of respite are quickly overtaken by new, ever more unfair misfortunes.
Yacine refuses to have his identity reduced to this succession of suffering. “Incredible things fall on you, divert the course of your existence and upset it from top to bottom. No matter how much you flee to the end of the world, take refuge where no one is likely to find you, they follow you like a pack of stray dogs and make you someone unlike you and become the only story you will remember. Some call these things mektoub. Others, less unreasonable, say it’s the life”. With a generous, colorful language, Yasmina Khadra takes us on a luminous journey that sees Yacine, and us with him, learning to forgive.
About the author: Why is Yasmina Khadra called Yasmina Khadra? Mohammed Moulessehoul wanted to escape censorship in Algeria and chose his wife’s two first names as a pseudonym. An officer in the Algerian army for 25 years, he claimed his retirement rights in 2000 to devote himself entirely to writing. Readers discover it with the series of Commissioner Llob. He is the author of the trilogy The Swallows of Kabul, The Attack and The Sirens of Baghdad, or even What the day owes to the night. Translated in fifty countries, several of his books have been brought to the screen.
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Extract : “At a very young age, I was told that everyone was born with a duly established path, with precise stopovers, shortcuts and a point of departure from which we would not recover. We were convinced, in our douar, that when you hatch under the bad star, you strive to tame the worst. Alas, we were far from the truth. The worst cannot be tamed. And there is nothing worse than war. Nothing is not quite finished with the war, nothing is conquered, nothing is averted or avenged, nothing is really saved. there, in the head, in the flesh, in the air of time falsely appeased, stuck to the skin, bruising the memories, infiltrating each of our thoughts, whole, full, total, as incorrigible as a second nature”.
The Virtuous, Yasmina Khadra, Mialet-Barrault Publishers, 21 euros