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A stunning novel of post-war Paris that interweaves a coming-of-age story, a cross-cultural romance, and a portrait of the international youth at a definitive moment in contemporary history.
Paris, 1947. The city, recovering from the Nazi occupation, suffers from an economy in shambles and an unraveled social fabric. Alongside the wary and war-weary population, American GIs and young people from France's colonies also pack the city. Cecile Rosenbaum, from a bourgeois Jewish family that has lost everything, meets Minette Traoré, a feisty, French-born girl of Senegalese descent, on the bus to a Communist Youth Conference. There, she also meets Sebastien Danxomè, an aspiring architecture student from West Africa, and romance blooms.
Back in Paris, as these young internationals haunt the cafés and jazz clubs of the Latin Quarter, Cecile and Sebastien find their budding love muddied by confused loyalties and unyielding cultural traditions. When Mack Gray, a charming African-American GI, sets his sights on Cecile, her complicated relationship with Sebastien, as well as her fierce dedication to her newfound political ideologies, are pushed to the brink.
Nuanced, powerful, and sharply realized, The New Internationals chronicles the post-war awakening and the young women and men who rose up – and came together – in the beginnings of a vibrant political moment, trying to imagine a better world.
"Faladé draws out the psychological pressures faced by his characters...[and] unflinchingly portrays the messy legacy of colonialism and the implications of crossing the color line. This nuanced historical is worth a look." —Publishers Weekly
"Though the characters and settings of this novel are well-researched and carefully drawn, the memoir version of this story in the New Yorker is more compelling than the fictionalized one. Vividly dramatizes issues of race and politics in turbulent post-war Paris." —Kirkus Reviews
This information about The New Internationals was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Cristobal Vivar
David Wright Faladé is a professor of English at the University of Illinois A former Fulbright Fellow to Brazil, David Wright Faladé is the 2021-22 Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow of the NY Public Library's Cullman Center for Writers. His work has been recognized by the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Texas Institute of Letters. He teaches in the MFA program at the University of Illinois.
Wright Faladé is the co-author of the young adult novel Away Running and the nonfiction book Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers, which was a New Yorker notable selection and a St. Louis-Dispatch Best Book of 2001. He has written for the New Yorker, the Village ...
... Full Biography
Link to David Wright Falade's Website
Name Pronunciation
David Wright Falade: fuh-LAHD-ay
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