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Masculinities In War: René-Nicolas Ehni's Algérie Roman, Jane E. Evans

Jane E. Evans

René-Nicolas Ehni, controversial social figure and critic in France since the 1960s and literary figure especially known for his plays and novels, characterizes his French military service during the Algerian war for independence in his autobiographical Algérie roman, published in 2002. In the novel, the first-person narrator-protagonist intersperses his descriptions of the struggle with scenes from his past and present denoting family genealogies and homosexual relationships. Through a narration that is itself marked by violence, including digressions, rhetorical figures and discontinuous prose, Algérie roman strongly affirms the significance of masculine friendships of every kind.

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The Quasi-Confessional Autobiography: Mort D'Un Silence, By Clémence Boulouque, Jane E. Evans

Jane E. Evans

Since 2003, when Clémence Boulouque's memoir, Mort d'un silence, was published, its author has written in a variety of genres, including novels, articles, and film scripts. Mort d'un silence, her first autobiographical work, interests the reader for several reasons: it revisits Judge Gilles Boulouque's suicide in December 1990 and the consequences of this act for his family, especially his thirteen-year-old daughter, Clémence; it recalls the political climate in France during the late 1980s, when Gilles Boulouque had already begun to fight terrorism; and it illustrates the tension between disclosure and concealment as its twenty-six-year-old narrator describes her passage …

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