Essais Documents Les Heritiers Du Silence

INHERITED SILENCE CHILDREN OF ALGERIAN CONSCRIPTS There were more than a million conscripts in Algeria, mobilised for something which was not recognised as a war at the time. For many of them, the striking, even traumatic experience of this nameless, inglorious conflict has been buried in silence. It had no place in official history and aroused more embarrassment than curiosity. Even their own families asked few questions. Deep down, no one really wanted to hear what they had to say, and they chose to keep quiet, for the long term. In the next generation and in a different context, now that people are beginning to write about the history and memories of the Algerian war, some of their children find they have inherited that silence. This is true for Florence Dosse herself. Part personal quest and part enquiry, she interviewed former conscripts, as well as their wives and now grown-up children who were told almost nothing. We are shown the "frozen lives" of the former, told in words from the past; their wives' distress; the words that went unsaid between husbands and wives; and the combination of ignorance, taboo, pain and shame experienced by their children. This book's profound originality derives from the juxtaposition of these three points of view and from Florence Dosse's acute rendering of them. Florence Dosse was born in 1963, shortly after the end of the Algerian war and her father's return home. This is her first book.