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53 pages 1 hour read

Claire Messud

This Strange Eventful History

Claire MessudFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024

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Symbols & Motifs

Places and Spaces: Paris, Algiers, The Mediterranean Region, and Gaston’s Toulon Apartment

In the world of This Strange Eventful History, places and spaces symbolize identity and home. Paris is one of the novel’s first settings and is a significant place for the family. The story begins as nine-year-old François composes a letter to his father in Greece and contemplates whether to mention the Nazi occupation of France’s capital city. As he writes, he reflects on what Paris means to him: As a young French Algerian boy, he understands himself as French and Paris as his capital city. However, as a member of the pieds-noirs community, he identifies himself as French Algerian. He muses that he has never, in fact, been to France and that for him France is a kind of abstraction. He has a much more concrete sense of himself as French Algerian, although he spent the bulk of his youth outside Algeria too. Paris and France thus symbolize a fraught cultural identity that is difficult to access but always in the background for French Algerians.

Algeria too becomes a complex symbol. For Gaston and Lucille’s generation, it initially symbolizes home and identity. More so than their children or grandchildren, they understand their identity through the blurred text
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