Paris, Julliard, 376 pages.

This first volume of his memoirs revisits his childhood, up to 1944. It opens with Green Paradise, in which the Garden plays a key role as God’s finished work on earth. It is “the natural state of a beloved child, well nourished, in immediate contact with nature“.

Then, with the move to Toulouse, came Le temps de l’ennui. The economic crisis of the ’30s pauperized the d’Eaubonne family, and the lack of everything (” Ah, those children who are always hungry! “This time of boredom was unbearable for Françoise’s ardent soul. This time of boredom was an unbearable suffocation for the ardent soul of little Françoise, who found refuge and consolation in books, writing and the spectacle of the world, some of whose bewildering specimens frequented the house, like the mythomaniac Christian, one of her main characters in Le Quadrille des Matamores. However, these restrictions did not prepare her for what was to follow after a brief happy interlude: war was declared.

In her deprived Toulouse, with parents who were not very resourceful, she experienced hunger – real hunger – and the cold (which took the life of her father and grandmother) like so many others of her generation. She received the full force of the revelation that the death camps were beyond horror. But she also experienced the Resistance, the solidarity of the poor, and her first real literary contract.

From this crucible will emerge a Françoise free of puritanical moralism and illusory propriety, determined to cry out “To the last breath, to the last rattle, to the rifle squad or the drone of the wake: fuck you!“

Paris, Buchet / Chastel, 391 pages.

Note: Awaiting annotation.