by Euan Cameron (Translator), Jean-Michel Guenassia (Author)
Paris, 1959. As dusk settles over the immigrant quarter, 12-year-old Michel Marini - amateur photographer and compulsive reader - is drawn to the hum of the local bistro. From his usual position at the football table, he has a vantage point on a grown-up world - of rock 'n' roll and of the Algerian War. But as the sun sinks and the plastic players spin, Michel's concentration is not on the game, but on the huddle of men gathered in the shadows of a back room...Past the bar, behind a partly drawn curtain, a group of eastern European men gather, where under a cirrus of smoke and over the squares of chess boards, they tell of their lives before France - of lovers and wives, children and ambitions, all exiled behind the Iron Curtain. Listening to this band of survivors and raconteurs, Michel is introduced to a world beyond the boundaries of his childhood experience, a world of men made formidable in the face of history, ideas and politics: the world of the Incorrigible Optimists Club.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 640
Edition: Main
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Published: 07 May 2015
ISBN 10: 1848875428
ISBN 13: 9781848875425
Book Overview: The European bestseller (over 650,000 copies sold), The Incorrigible Optimists Club is a truly lovable novel of growing up and of idealism and disappointment
A magnificent generational portrait... A novel that occasionally makes you cry and often makes you laugh