The Kites
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- € 8,99
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- € 8,99
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A New York Times Notable Book 2018
'A rebel French writer ... a brilliant storyteller, a master craftsman and one of France's most original writers' Independent
'The Kites is a novel touched from beginning to end with grace, a great saga about the innate dignity of love that succeeds in the feat of being funny and poetic, tender and sharp, committed and fierce, with a touch of brilliance in the art of dialogue' Muriel Barbery, author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog
A quiet village in Normandy, 1932. Ludo is ten years old and lives with his uncle, a kindly, eccentric creator of elaborate kites. One day, sitting in a strawberry field, Ludo meets the beautiful young Polish aristocrat Lila. And so begins Ludo's lifelong adventure of love and longing for Lila, who only begins to return his feelings just as Europe descends into the devastation of World War 2. After Poland and France fall, Lila and Ludo are separated. Ludo's friends in the village must find their own ways of resisting: the local restaurateur who is dedicated above all to France's haute cuisine, a Jewish brothel madam who sleeps with her unwitting enemies and Ludo, who cycles past the Nazis every day, passing on messages for the French Resistance - thinking always of Lila.
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Published for the first time in English, this novel from Gary (The Roots of Heaven), two-time winner of the Prix Goncourt, follows a young man's passion through the ravages of WWII. Ludo lives with his uncle, kite maker Ambrose Fleury, in the small town of Cl ry in the French countryside. Ludo, like everyone in the Fleury family, has an impressive "historical memory" that earns him the ire of his teachers and arguments with Lila, the object of his affection, who isn't as keen as Ludo to rehash the country's recent bloody history. Lila, the mercurial, naive daughter of Polish aristocrats, waffles about her own identity or plays at pushing Ludo away, but never truly takes on the contours of a fully-formed character. While characterizations of Lila can be maddeningly flat, Ludo's foray into the French Resistance set against the backdrop of German-occupied France is beautifully rendered. Gary handles the emotional tightrope of espionage and the brutal reality of battle with clarity and precision, all captured magnificently by Mouillot's translation: "I would climb the wall and go to wait for Lila in the lane of chestnut trees, and the stone bench, which had with the moonlight exchanged nothing but chill and emptiness for so long, welcomed us with friendship." This is a wonderful translation of a French classic.
