Des hommes by Laurent Mauvignier: A Novel of Filiation?

Abstract

Des hommes by Laurent Mauvignier focuses on two cousins who, after completing their military service in Algeria between 1960 and 1962, return to their village, deeply scarred by their experiences of the war. An incident leads one of them, the narrator for most of the story, to reconstruct the life of the other, who has fallen into decline, and gradually recall their shared past. One could consider this text a “novel of filiation,” although it resists this genre classification due to the narrative structure devised by Mauvignier.