The Meaning of History

On December 30, 2006, the day before New Year's Eve, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was hanged. Why did the news of this execution plunge Isabelle into this sudden sadness? At 37, she should feel fulfilled: an interesting job, a secure position, an ambitious husband, two handsome boys, a beautiful little house in a recently built, clean residential area on the outskirts of Orléans. So what? What does Saddam's death have to do with her life? February 1991. The University of Paris 8 is mobilizing against the first Gulf War. Isabelle discovers this extraordinary university, its professors with their unacademic teachings, its activist students, its labyrinthine, smoky corridors. December 2006. The death of Saddam Hussein echoes for Isabelle the death of her illusions, that of a new world, a different world, a better world that would give meaning to the history of women and men. 1991, hope; 2006, death: is this ultimately the meaning of history? The meaning of her own history, Isabelle?

Antipodes

What is the narrator fleeing by accepting a position in New Caledonia, twenty-two thousand kilometers from France? On the other side of the world, he discovers this French territory considered by the UN to be one of the last colonies on the planet. A territory where two unrelated universes coexist: the "bush" and the capital, Nouméa. Nouméa. A strange microcosm still living in the 1980s. Here, people live well. Very well, even. They have fun, they play, they enjoy the sun and the sea all year round. For those who live there, the idea of independence has no meaning. In the minds of those who matter, at least: in the minds of white people. They are kind, carefree, and willfully blind to the poverty and misery they encounter in Nouméa. A small town, lost in the Pacific. Yet it strangely reminds the narrator of another city, far away: Monaco. In the 1980s, when he was a teenager, a wealthy uncle invited him on vacation. Every summer, his uncle's friends came too. People revolted and angered by François Mitterrand's recent victory and the left's rise to power. Men, exclusively. Or almost. Bitter, unhealthy, contemptuous men. Vicious men, often. Dangerous men, sometimes. Every year, the narrator went on vacation to Monaco. But why? Nouméa will tell him.