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Les noms de la tribu
Chaque génération a ses héros, ses mythes et ses lieux. Pour ceux qui eurent vingt ans dans les années soixante, ce furent Ben Bella, Castro, Guevara, la révolution, le tiers monde. Il fallait quitter la vieille Europe étriquée pour l'Afrique, l'Amérique latine, l'Asie. C'était là et là seulement qu'on referait l'homme. Certains s'engagèrent dans la bataille pour le développement, d'autres dans la lutte contre les régimes d'oppression.
Partageant, comme ceux de sa 'tribu', cette soif de vérité et de justice, cet idéal de vagabondage et d'insoumission, Conrad Detrez vit dix ans dans le tiers monde, au Brésil d'abord, en Algérie ensuite.
Onze ans plus tard, il retourne au Brésil sur les traces de sa jeunesse qui recoupent celles de tous les tiers-mondistes de sa génération.
Journal de voyage, livre de souvenirs, ouvrage de réflexion politique, les Noms de la tribu prolonge et complète l'Herbe à brûler qui reçut le Prix Renaudot en 1978.
Partageant, comme ceux de sa 'tribu', cette soif de vérité et de justice, cet idéal de vagabondage et d'insoumission, Conrad Detrez vit dix ans dans le tiers monde, au Brésil d'abord, en Algérie ensuite.
Onze ans plus tard, il retourne au Brésil sur les traces de sa jeunesse qui recoupent celles de tous les tiers-mondistes de sa génération.
Journal de voyage, livre de souvenirs, ouvrage de réflexion politique, les Noms de la tribu prolonge et complète l'Herbe à brûler qui reçut le Prix Renaudot en 1978.
159 pages
Published January 1, 1981
2 people want to read
About the author
Conrad Detrez
17 books2 followersConrad Detrez (1937-1985) was a Belgian (from 1982 on French) journalist, diplomat and novelist.
Abandoning his theological studies at the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain), Belgium, Detrez traveled to Brazil at age 25 and, while teaching French literature there, became involved in revolutionary politics. Deported by the Brazilian authorities, he went to Algeria and Portugal before settling in Paris in 1978. He became a French citizen in 1982.
Detrez’s first published works were translations of Brazilian authors and revolutionary essays. As his political disillusionment grew, he turned to autobiographical fiction. Ludo (1974) is a fictional account of his World War II childhood, and Les Plumes du coq (1975) treats the 1951 abdication of the Belgian king Leopold III. Detrez’s most celebrated novel is L’Herbe à brûler (1978; A Weed for Burning), in which he recounts with carnivalesque glee the fatal return of his disillusioned protagonist—who has wandered for years in South America—to a Europe sapped of its revolutionary zeal. Criticism of leftist intelligentsia continued to be a theme in Detrez’s later work. He also published one book of poetry, Le Mâle Apôtre (1982), and his novel La Ceinture de feu (1984), about a French scientist in war-torn Nicaragua, was translated into English as Zone of Fire.
Abandoning his theological studies at the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain), Belgium, Detrez traveled to Brazil at age 25 and, while teaching French literature there, became involved in revolutionary politics. Deported by the Brazilian authorities, he went to Algeria and Portugal before settling in Paris in 1978. He became a French citizen in 1982.
Detrez’s first published works were translations of Brazilian authors and revolutionary essays. As his political disillusionment grew, he turned to autobiographical fiction. Ludo (1974) is a fictional account of his World War II childhood, and Les Plumes du coq (1975) treats the 1951 abdication of the Belgian king Leopold III. Detrez’s most celebrated novel is L’Herbe à brûler (1978; A Weed for Burning), in which he recounts with carnivalesque glee the fatal return of his disillusioned protagonist—who has wandered for years in South America—to a Europe sapped of its revolutionary zeal. Criticism of leftist intelligentsia continued to be a theme in Detrez’s later work. He also published one book of poetry, Le Mâle Apôtre (1982), and his novel La Ceinture de feu (1984), about a French scientist in war-torn Nicaragua, was translated into English as Zone of Fire.
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