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Belfond
EAN : 9782714482259
Shaping : BROCHE
Pages : 320
Size : 134 x 190 mm
I'll Write Your Name

Collection : Belfond Pointillés
Release date : 22/08/2019
Youra is a young idealistic doctor who is forbidden from practising because he is Jewish. He continues to defy the curfew in Brussels, listening to banned music and setting the world to rights in the company of his gang of friends. One evening in April 1943, he decides to take... Youra is a young idealistic doctor who is forbidden from practising because he is Jewish. He continues to defy the curfew in Brussels, listening to banned music and setting the world to rights in the company of his gang of friends. One evening in April 1943, he decides to take direct action. With two childhood friends, he attempts something that even the partisans deem to be foolhardy: to stop a train bound for the camps…

A seductive polyglot and obsessive intellectual, Youra knows that this ‘night of the train’ will turn him into a different person. Plunging into the murky waters of the Resistance and contending with collaborators, he is forced to examine his own conscious and unconscious motivations for risking his life and staring straight into the eyes of his enemies.

In this debut novel imbued with magic realism, Sylvestre Sbille pulls off the tour de force of conveying the ferocious will to live of charismatic individuals who are desperately trying to stay afloat amid the sombre waters of the Occupation. A little-known episode of the Resistance in Europe: the Jewish resistance in Belgium, two of whose heroes were Youra Livchitz and his brother Choura, who planned (Choura) and carried out (Youra and his two accomplices) the attack on Convoy N°20 that left the region of Antwerp bound for Auschwitz on the night of 19 April 1943. Despite their limited resources (a lantern, a pistol, some wire cutters) and the ‘amateurism’ of this committed band of young partisans, this operation saved over a hundred lives. A novel that confronts us with the horrors of the round-ups of Jews throughout Europe and in Belgium in particular from 1941-1944, while also conveying the ferocious will to live and the intelligence of its characters.
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EAN : 9782714482259
Shaping : BROCHE
Pages : 320
Size : 134 x 190 mm
Belfond