• Favorite readings can be shared.

  • Our community recommends a new book to you every day.

  • Today, “Mustapha is going to war” by David Hury, published on September 16, 2021 by Éditions Riveneuve.

Christian Dorsan, novelist, blogger and contributor to the

20 Minutes

Books

reading group

, recommends

 David Hury's

Mustapha goes to war

, published on September 16, 2021 by Éditions Riveneuve.


Her favorite quote:

“The French had known how to develop an art - subtle or explosive - of making the other feel in the wrong place.

It was also that, to become adult: to understand that the ideals and the naivety of youth were indeed only mirages.

That this freedom, this value which he had cherished so much since his departure from Figuig at the age of seventeen, did not weigh heavily in the face of the mountains of certainty of the people who surrounded him.

"


Why this book?

  • Because History is made up of little stories,

    extraordinary and exemplary human adventures. This is what this novel tells and Mustapha's fight against all forms of oppression. Child of an oasis, he will befriend the governor's son. On the one hand, a "filial" link will develop with this family, on the other, the native will remain who benefits from the greatness of France. Can a friendship survive this big gap?

  • Because a family secret is at the start of the writing of this novel.

     Author David Hury, whom I interviewed, confided in me: “Gustave did not tell anyone about his experiences during the 1940s and 1960s, nor of the acts that one can consider in hindsight as heroic, nor of the tortures suffered. He only mentioned all these subjects with his children, at the end of his life, in the mid-1990s. In the family, everyone has always called him Gustave: I only discovered his true identity. 'in 2015… "

  • Because the characters have existed and are close to the author.

    “Gustave was a UFO in my family, an affable and happy Oriental,” says David Hury. I knew him when I was a child, I met him in Normandy in the village of which I speak in the novel, where he had been parachuted in 1941 and where he had met the daughter of the teacher whom he married in 1948. This woman whom I also evoke a lot in the novel, Annette, was my father's first cousin. "

  • Because richly documented, the course in the resistance

    with the training in London, the missions in occupied France, the prison, the tortures, it is a real plunge into these dark years that David Hury proposes: “I worked this novel as an investigation, he said. I have cross-checked my sources and my information. The contribution of historians, for example on the history of French colonization and administration in the 1920s in a remote corner of the Moroccan protectorate, or on the history of the Parisian police - both during WWII and during the Algerian War. "

  • Because the question raised by this novel is that of the legitimacy

    of a fight.

    “The struggle for freedom is universal,” says David Hury.

    This is also why the history of Mustapha is rich in lessons for understanding the world today.

    He fought to rid France of the German occupier, then to rid the Maghreb of the French occupier.

    This struggle for the independence of peoples, we still find it today in the four corners of the globe, I have seen it, experienced it closely.

    "


The essentials in 2 minutes

The plot.

 From 1929 to 1962, the life of Mustapha, a young Moroccan from the oasis of Figuig who will land in France on the eve of the war and who will join the Resistance.

Between brotherhood of arms and ordinary racism, a rich life made of love, friendship and commitment.

Characters.

 Mustapha alias Marcel Mimoun allias Gustave in the Resistance.

Annette, the daughter of his network contact in Normandy and whom he is going to marry.

Armand, the childhood friend.

Yacine the FNL activist.

Places.

 The oasis of Figuig, Oran, Paris, Normandy, London.

The time.

 From 1929 to 1962.

The author.

 David Hury is a journalist photographer who lived in Beirut.

He likes to travel and tell his experiences through his pictures.

He has worked for numerous editorial staff and has published six books.

This book was read with

 passion: the novel unfolds over thirty years during which history has been rich.

Superbly documented, this novel is a strong testimony, an extraordinary human story that should have been the norm.

An exemplary novel.

Buy this book on Amazon

Do you want to recommend a book that you particularly liked?

Join our community by clicking here

20 minutes of context

Some of the links in this article are sponsored.

Every time you buy a book through one of them, we get a commission that helps us pay our bills.

To avoid any conflict of interest, we have adopted the following method:

1. The contributors to the section choose their books, write their files and their reviews in complete independence, without worrying about any links that will be added.

2. The links are added a posteriori, each time we find the recommended product on one of our partner platforms.

Thanks in advance to everyone who clicks!

  • Resistance

  • Morocco

  • Occupation

  • Novel

  • Book sheet 20 Minutes