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Chargement... The Hired Man (2013)par Aminatta Forna
  
Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.   ) Margaret09 | Apr 15, 2024 |   ) Kiramke | Jun 27, 2023 | It is a character study of what happens to traumatized people after war, where people chose sides, pitting neighbor against neighbor, and resulting in lingering aftereffects. It may be a good idea to read up on the history of the Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian wars beforehand, if you are not already familiar with it, since the author does not provide many details. It is a slowly developing story, where the reader gradually becomes aware of Duro’s past. This method is effective in spurring the reader’s curiosity. I very much enjoy Aminatta Forna’s writing style. She has previously explored similar themes in another part of the world (Sierra Leone). Forna is one of my favorite authors. I can also recommend: - [b:The Memory of Love|10318484|The Memory of Love|Aminatta Forna|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328310321l/10318484._SX50_.jpg|10719873] - 5 stars- My Review - [b:Happiness|36110370|Happiness|Aminatta Forna|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1503497184l/36110370._SY75_.jpg|56848330] - 4 stars - My Review - [b:The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion|55836545|The Window Seat Notes from a Life in Motion|Aminatta Forna|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1618283461l/55836545._SY75_.jpg|87054869] - 4 stars - My Review - [b:Ancestor Stones: A Novel|39949873|Ancestor Stones|Aminatta Forna|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1524714764l/39949873._SY75_.jpg|248566] - 4 stars - My Review - [b:The Devil that Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest|22465719|The Devil that Danced on the Water A Daughter's Quest|Aminatta Forna|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1402687593l/22465719._SY75_.jpg|105956] - 4 stars - My Review (  ) Castlelass | Oct 30, 2022 | Duro lives in Gost, a small town in Croatia. He lives alone and sometimes struggles to make ends meet, so when Laura and her family come from England to stay in a house which has been empty for some years, he sees an opportunity for a few weeks of building work, a chance to earn some money. He chats to Laura as he helps to renovate her property, and he listens to her talk. However, it is soon obvious that Duro doesn't talk about everything. This beautiful town has some very dark secrets - in the present it is 2007, just 12 years after the end of the war between Croatia and Serbia. Forna was born in Scotland but her father was from Sierra Leone, where her first two novels and a memoir are set. In a radio interview, she has expressed her shock that people who wouldn't consider Sierra Leone as a holiday destination are happy to snap up cheap properties in Croatia with no concern or curiosity about the war there in the 1990s. The Hired Man is beautifully written and thought provoking - Duro's story about his past unfolds quite slowly, and in the meantime there is a portrait of life in a town which has not really come to terms with its troubled past. Reviewed through the Amazon Vine programme, 15 May 2013 (  ) elkiedee | Oct 23, 2022 | ) huizenga | Mar 28, 2019 |
 Aminatta Forna made her name with her memoir The Devil That Danced on the Water, which documents the circumstances surrounding the death of her father, a Sierra Leonean politician who was hanged on charges of treason in 1975. In The Hired Man she returns to her speciality theme of the psychology of civil conflict, but in a different setting – the small, aptly named, Croatian town of Gost, a place ravaged by the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. The book's narrator is Duro Kolak, an introspective handyman who grew up in the town. His memories of the immediate and the distant past are intertwined – a familiar device in contemporary fiction, but one that particularly suits the novel's subject matter. Laura, a naive middle-class Englishwoman, arrives in Gost with her two children to renovate a pretty house on the town's outskirts. Duro, who is intimately acquainted with the house, offers his services. The renovation functions as a slightly obvious metaphor for the resurrection of difficult and complicated memories. We learn that, beneath the surface, life in Gost is anything but the simple pastoral idyll Laura had anticipated. Petty interactions between the town's inhabitants conceal a terrible history. With her beautifully precise style, Forna sensitively depicts members of a community resuming day-to-day life after violent civil conflict – each with the knowledge of the heinous crimes they committed against one another. The Hired Man is an ingenious examination of the kind of ghosts that those with no experience of civil war are unable to see.  The Hired Man is set in Croatia, in and around the fictional but entirely convincing little town of Gost (which apparently means “guest”). Its eponymous narrator is Duro Kolak, a childless bachelor of 46, who lives alone in a hut where his family used to keep pigs, in the wooded hills above the town. At the Zodijak, Gost’s principal café, Duro, Fabjan and Kresimir – a pair of quasi-gangsters he has known since boyhood – are the only three remaining of “the old crowd”. Near Duro’s hut is “the blue house”, which has been bought by an English family, and where in the summer of 2007 Laura, the wife, arrives with her two teenage children – sulky, lazy Matthew, who is about to go to university, and earnest, podgy little Grace – while her husband, the children’s stepfather, works back in England. The house is neglected and decayed. Duro introduces himself, offers to do up the place, and befriends the family. As he works on the house – assisted by Grace, who discovers a mosaic that has been whitewashed over, of a “red-bodied bird, golden plumed, dragging a golden tail” – hints of Gost’s past emerge, and the optimism of his account of careful restoration is skilfully and sickeningly undermined by a growing apprehension of evil, which is all the more frightening for being approached obliquely, and remaining largely mysterious. When Laura drives into a Croatian village with the sun glinting off her 4x4, our first glimpse of her is through the sights of a rifle. Holding the gun is Duro, who will be the eyes for this powerful new novel by Aminatta Forna. He is the local handyman, as well as a hunter with a soft tread and a sharp eye, whose life has been spent in and out of the forest shooting deer, birds and, when necessary, people. Laura is a middle-class Englishwoman abroad, with two teenage children in tow, trilling into the village of Gost to show her appreciation of its pastoral simplicity by renovating an abandoned blue house. But this is no Year in Provence. As Duro notes drily, the English are always in love with the past, but for his countrymen, it is a place best avoided. The pacing of this novel is stunning. After an edgy beginning, it blooms into joyousness halfway through when the mosaic is restored, and then the cruelty begins to flow. But in the end, The Hired Man is not a simple story of revenge. It is subtler and harder; it is about the power of not exacting revenge. Prix et récompensesDistinctions
Gost is surrounded by mountains and fields of wild flowers. The summer sun burns. The winter brings freezing winds. Beyond the boundaries of the town an old house which has lain empty for years is showing signs of life. One of the windows, glass darkened with dirt, today stands open, and the lively chatter of English voices carries across the fallow fields. Laura and her teenage children have arrived. A short distance away lies the hut of Duro Kolak who lives alone with his two hunting dogs. As he helps Laura with repairs to the old house, they uncover a mosaic beneath the ruined plaster and, in the rising heat of summer, painstakingly restore it. But Gost is not all it seems; conflicts long past still suppurate beneath the scars. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: (4.09)
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