The Incorrigible Optimists Club

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.

Author: Jean-Michel Guenassia
Publisher: Atlantic Books (UK)
Published: 04/01/2017
Pages: 640
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 7.70h x 5.00w x 1.70d
ISBN13: 9781848875425
ISBN10: 1848875428
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Literary
- Fiction | Coming of Age

About the Author
Jean-Michel Guenassia was born in Algeria, 1950. He is a prolific screenwriter and he lives in France.