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Article: Pauvre de Gaulle!(Review)
- Article from:
- World Literature Today
- Article date:
- January 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 University of Oklahoma. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Stephane Zagdanski. Pauvre de Gaulle! Paris. Pauvert. 2000. 580 pages. 150 F. ISBN 2-720-21386-1.
THE TITLE OF STEPHANE Zagdanski's novel expresses the mixture of pathos and scorn that the author has for Charles de Gaulle as a totem for what France has become. Born in Paris in 1963 and seven years old when de Gaulle died in 1970, Zagdanski calls this, his eighth book, "l'antibiographie sarcastique." Certainly, his tone is that of a subversive narrator intent upon toppling the totem by dancing around it, in the tradition of the biblical account of the fall of Jericho. The anti-biographical nature of Pauvre de Gaulle! is especially intriguing in that Zagdanski has ...