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142 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 27, 2014







لا أحد عاش تلك الحرب، وظل مؤمنًا أن للفرد أية قيمة
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سأل نفسه في مناسبة أو مناسبتين
ما إن كانت معاناتهم أجدر بالإحترام من القيم التي تمت تعبئتهم باسمها
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من أجل أصحاب الرتب
من أجل رجال السياسة والمستفيدين وكل الحمقى الذين يتبعونهم
من أجل الذين يرسلون الآخرين إلى الحرب
ومن يذهبون إليها بأنفسهم
فعلت ذلك من أجل الذين
يؤمنون بهذا الهراء
البطولة! الشجاعة! الوطنية!
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فعلت ذلك من أجل من؟ من أجلك ، من أجل أصحاب الرتب، من أجل رجال السياسة والمستفيدين وكل الحمقى الذين يتبعونهم ..من أجل الذين يرسلون الآخرين إلى الحرب، ومن يذهبون إليها بأنفسهم، فعلت ذلك من أجل الذين يؤمنون بهذا الهراء: البطولة! الشجاعة! الوطنية!
"Do you know he's in prison?"A nice serendipity to be reviewing this fascinating French novella on Bastille Day itself! I sensed this was something special from the moment I opened it. It is one of those lovely Europa Editions that feels good in the hand and is set so generously on the page. It is a simple story with only two main characters, both warmly developed. The setting is an almost empty prison in a small French town, in the dog days of 1919, yet I had the growing sense that the book dealt with themes of great importance—a sense that increased until almost the very end. And all this in prose, smoothly translated by Adriana Hunter, that is as straightforward yet evocative as a novel by Simenon; here is how it begins:
"No. What's he done?"
"Something stupid, on Bastille Day."
At one o'clock in the afternoon, with the crushing heat over the town. the dog's howling was unbearable. The animal had been there on the Place Michelet for two days, and for two days it had barked. It was a big, brown, shorthaired dog with no collar and a torn ear. It wailed methodically, more or less once every three seconds, making a deep sound that was enough to drive you mad.I won't say much about the plot, for this is a mystery of a kind. Only not a whodunnit; the who is perfectly obvious. This is a military prison and there is only one remaining prisoner, Jacques Pierre Marcel Morlac, corporal, aged 28. His investigating officer, Hugues Lantier de Grez, is hardly much older. After a career as military lawyer during the war, he is about to retire to private practice, but he just has this one crime to tidy up first. Only for almost the entire length of the book, we are not told what it was. This is a very unusual kind of mystery: not a whodunnit but a whatwasit.