Des Hommes by Laurent Mauvignier

 ´Tu fais encore des cauchemars?´

Everyone who went through a trauma and a war knows that the suffering does not end once the events passed. The traumatic events do remain in our body and brains, fragments of reality are distorted to leave the traumatic memory reshape it. The smile of a woman or the fragrance of a flower are triggers for reinstating the past.

Des Hommes by Laurent Mauvignier is one of the many recent books in the French literature approaching a topic tabu for too long: the massacres of the French Army in Algeria. Years after the events, the perpetrators, young men unaware of what exactly a war meant, fuelled by stories about the French Resistance and Verdun want to leave their ´men´ trace on life. And they failed, ended up hunted for the rest of their lives.

There is no voice for the victims and no sympathy for the perpetrators either. The mechanism of memory and the ways in which it takes over the present is the ultimate punishment. The lives of the innocent young men fuelled by ideological hate - they were convinced they were doing an act of bravery, eventually defending their country who in fact was not there - was for ever damaged. Years after years they will remain in contact and will found solace in their common stained future.

Des Hommes is a book about war trauma in general, explored through the lives of simple people, soldiers for the cause of a blind war. Laurent Mauvignier prose flows as a human elegy, enfolding through the hidden corners of the mind, while keeping the proportions real. It is after all, a book about humans, everyday beings caught into the net of social obligations and ideological lies. I am delighted to have another book of him on my TBR and I am very curious where he will bring my literary imagination to.

Rating: 4.5 stars