Literary Homage to the November 2015 Paris attacks' victims - reading list
Three years after the Paris terrorist attacks that occurred on the night of the 13th of November, the whole country, joined by people from all over the world, commemorates the deadliest attacks France had undergone since the end of the Second World War. Following those traumatic events, many decided to voice their experience through literature so as to honor the memory of the 130 people who were killed, and to celebrate France's resilience.
First, let's review the testimonies published in the direct aftermath of the attacks. Aurélie Silvestre wrote Nos 14 novembre (JC Lattès). Her husband Matthieu was killed by the terrorists while he was attending the concert of the Eagles of Death Metal at the Bataclan. Her book tells about how she managed to cope with the devastating loss of her husband, while bringing up their 3-year-old son and expecting their baby. Depicting the contrast between death and preparing to give birth, in other words to give life, her book is a story of how she chose to live on, remembering how Matthieu always told her that facing terror, “the only thing we can do is to love one another even more”.
Antoine Leiris also wrote his own testimony of the loss of a loved one in Vous n’aurez pas ma haine (Fayard) This book is also about the contrast between life and death, as he lost his wife who was killed at the Bataclan while he was at home with their one-year-old son. Antoine Leiris relates in this book, his first novel published four months after the attacks, the twelve days that followed the tragedy, and how he led an interior fight to reconstruct his life. His novel was adapted as a play last year at the Théâtre du Rond Point (Paris).
Aurélie Silvestre’s and Antoine Leiris’s stories therefore deliver intimate stories of personal loss.
Other literary works focus on the global effects of the attacks on France as a whole. Nous n’avons pas fini de nous aimer, by Danielle Mérian and Tania de Montaigne (Grasset), tells us about how the country recovered from the attacks. The novel is about the gatherings that occurred directly after the attacks, the feeling of community and of fraternity that it created. Danielle Mérian, a lawyer and activist for human rights, was interviewed on the 14th of November, and her words were broadcast all over the world, embodying the spirit of a lively resistance against the horrors of terrorism. “The day after the 13th of November, I went out, as thousands of others did, with a flower for the dead. There, a microphone was handed to me and I said, simply, what I believe in. I said, Paris is a feast, Hemingway’s novel, is a beautiful response to Daesh. I said, we will fraternize with five million of Muslims, and we will fight against ten thousand barbarians. It went like that, it was obvious; fraternity first”. Click here to see a video of her interview.
Finally, in an activist tone, Françoise Rudetzki wrote Après l’attentat (Calmann-Lévy). As the co-founder and member of SOS Attentats, an association for the victims of terrorist attacks, she was present to assist the victims during both the January Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 2015 and the 13th of November attacks. In her book, she relates the testimonies she heard at the Invalides hospital, where she was stationed to help the victims. Her book comes as a manifesto that deplores the insufficiencies of the current political system regarding terrorism. She asserts that we now live in a time of repeated terrorist attacks, and she raises awareness on the fact that not enough means are put in place to anticipate such crises, or support resilience when they occur.
Our thoughts go out to the families to the victims and to those who were harmed during the attacks.