This strange eventful history

Claire Messud

£10.99

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June 1940. As Paris falls to the Germans, Gaston Cassar – honorable servant of France, devoted husband and father, currently posted as naval attache in Salonica – bids farewell to his beloved wife, aunt and children, placing his faith in God that they will be reunited after the war. But escaping the violence of that cataclysm is not the same as emerging unscathed. The family will never again be whole.

ISBN: 9780349127071 Category:

Description

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024

‘An epic family odyssey’ Guardian, Book of the Day

Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the Cassar family is buffeted by conflict, struggling to find its feet – separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all.

This Strange Eventful History is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family’s strangeness; of François’s union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.

Inspired in part by her own family’s history, Claire Messud animates her characters’ rich interior lives amid the social and political upheaval of the recent past. This Strange Eventful History is an immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history.

‘[A] wise and insightful novel about identity and family’ The Times, Book of the Day

‘A rich, sprawling saga… This Strange Eventful History may be Messud’s finest book’ Sunday Telegraph

Additional information

Dimensions 19.8 × 12.6 × 2.2 cm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

448

Language

English

Edition

1st paperback ed

Dewey

813.6 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K

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