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This strange eventful history : a novel  Cover Image Book Book

This strange eventful history : a novel / Claire Messud.

Summary:

Inspired in part by long-ago stories from her own family's history, this masterful story follows the Cassars over seven decades, starting with patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them, and ending with Chloe, who believes telling her family's buried stories will bring them all peace.
An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history, from one of our finest contemporary novelists. Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state -- 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, told with historical sweep, 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 long-ago stories from her own family's history, Claire Messud animates her characters' rich interior lives amid the social and political upheaval of the recent past. As profoundly intimate as it is expansive, This Strange Eventful History is "a tour de force...one of those rare novels that a reader doesn't merely read but lives through with the characters" (Yiyun Li). -- Provided by publisher.

Record details

  • ISBN: 9780393635041
  • ISBN: 039363504X
  • Physical Description: 428 pages : maps ; 24 cm
  • Publisher: New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company, [2024]
Subject: Families > Fiction.
Man-woman relationships > Fiction.
Siblings > Fiction.
Secrecy > Fiction.
Algeria > History > 20th century > Fiction.
Genre: Historical fiction.
Novels.

Available copies

  • 25 of 30 copies available at Missouri Evergreen. (Show)
  • 4 of 4 copies available at Scenic Regional.

Holds

  • 1 current hold with 30 total copies.
Show Only Available Copies
Location Call Number / Copy Notes Barcode Shelving Location Status Due Date
Scenic Regional-Hermann FIC MES (Text) 3008107397 Fiction Available -
Scenic Regional-St. Clair FIC MES (Text) 3008107400 Fiction Available -
Scenic Regional-Union FIC MES (Text) 3008107168 New Fiction Available -
Scenic Regional-Warrenton FIC MES (Text) 3008107389 New Fiction Available -


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