Detectives Beyond Borders is the luck of the Irish
My fellow diners included Bill Alder, up for an Edgar for his book Maigret, Simenon and France: Social Dimensions of the Novels and Stories. I learned as much from him about Simenon's early career as I did from Connolly about the afterlife of the Troubles in the Irish Republic, and that's not even counting some juicy tidbits about World War II and France. This most stimulating of Edgar dinners may keep me posting for weeks.Oh, and the food was good, too. Thanks, MWA.
© Peter Rozovsky 2014
Labels: Bill Alder, Edgar Awards, Edgar Awards 2014, France, Georges Simenon, Ireland, John Connolly
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 12:46 AM
5 Comments:
Let's hear those juicy tidbits from WWII France!
OK, not exactly juicy tidbits, but we discussed what the wars we call World Wars I and II are called in other countries, a subject bound to reveal much about national attitudes and histories. Alder said the French don't really have a name for World War II other than, occasionally, the war of resistance.
Now, I have read that the French call the war the Seconde (or Deuxième)Guerre Mondiale, but I'm sure you can well imagine the stimulating trains of thought that this set in motion. And it all happened right there at Table 35.
Interesting. Not - La guerre de la collaboration?
I remarked to Mr. Alder that after the war, of course everyone in France had fought in the resistance during the war. The discussion was really continuation of the reading I did for our panel at Bouchercon in Albany.
From Robert Gildea's Marianne in Chains:
"The moral universe of occupied France was notoriously murky. What was right and what was wrong, what patriotic and what unpatriotic, may have been clear in 1944, but not before."
It's no surprise many French would choose to remember only part of the story. What this means to you is that if Billy Boyle continues his overseas career past war's end, he'll have no shortage of work to do.
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