Atlantic Monthly Press
Atlantic Monthly Press
Atlantic Monthly Press
NEW!
A stunning historical 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 war, is brimming with young international students – African, Indochinese, Arab, as well as American and French – balancing on the precipice of a new world. Cecile Rosenbaum, a young Jewish girl quickly developing her own intellectual and political ideals, meets Minette – a feisty, French-born girl of Senegalese descent – on the bus to a Communist Youth Conference. There, she meets and begins to fall in love with Seb, who arrived from West Africa with his sister at just seven years old.
As Seb toils for the exams that will permit him to study French architecture at the Parisian university Beaux-Arts, he also begins to dig into his roots in Dahomey, the West African kingdom where he came from. Cecile struggles at her job at the Louvre, clashes with her white, Jewish family, and reckons with her memories of a childhood under Nazi occupation and her fierce dedication to her new political ideologies. Seb and Cecile find themselves entangled, and along the course of the novel they lose and find each other again – in the corners of jazz clubs, at a Louis Armstrong concert, in the square where Seb’s exam scores will be posted, and, finally, at a protest that turns shockingly violent.
Nuanced, powerful, and sharply realized, The New Internationals is a brilliant work of historical fiction that celebrates the awakening of the post-colonial movements of the 20th century and international youth population in Paris who rose up – and came together – in the beginnings of a vibrant political moment.
“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
“Faladé’s book is so accessible and rousing, though, that you hope it becomes available as a mass-market paperback, in packaging that more clearly announces: This book is a straight-up page-turner. There are no braided points of view here, no too-pretty words, no splintered syntax. No leaden diagnoses of the human predicament belch on the smoky skyline. The nature of the American experiment is implicitly questioned but not burned to the ground . . . This is a classic war story told simply and well, its meanings not forced but allowed to bubble up.”—Dwight Garner, New York Times
“In this profoundly reflective novel, Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award winner Faladé uses real-life Civil War sergeant Richard Etheridge to explore the immediate consequences of emancipation . . . A triumphant examination of U.S. history and race relations at a crucial juncture, as seen through the eyes of the well-wrought, ever-questioning Etheridge; highly recommended.”—Library Journal, starred review
“The story of the African Brigade, a unit of Black freedmen who fought for the Union during the Civil War, gets its due in this superior adult debut from Faladé . . . [Richard] Etheridge is made a fascinating figure, well suited to serve as the focal point for Faladé’s exploration of the complexities of Etheridge and his comrades’ rapid shift from powerlessness to armed military duty. Engrossing and complex, this will have readers riveted.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Tensely wrought . . . A masterful depiction of the precarious nature of Black life during the war and of slavery’s unrelenting assault on human dignity.”—Booklist (starred review)
“Wright Faladé’s richly detailed, grippingly told story breathes life into a revolutionary moment when the US moved a vital step forward toward achieving the ideals we’ve always proclaimed.”—Charles Frazier, National Book Award-winning author of Cold Mountain
“David Wright Faladé’s thrilling, revelatory Black Cloud Rising turns Civil War history upside down and makes America give up one of its darkest secrets—that our racial tension is literally a family feud.”—James Hannaham, Pen/Faulkner Award-winning author of Delicious Foods and The Pilot Imposter
“Black Cloud Rising is riveting and authentic—an intimate and brilliantly written portrayal of former slaves who risked everything to fight in the African Brigades during the Civil War. It’s a compelling and deeply moving story of race, war and the eternal pursuit of freedom.”—David Zucchino, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Wilmington’s Lie
“The brilliant portrayal of crucially defining matters of racial history in America will rightly draw great acclaim to David Wright Faladé’s Black Cloud Rising. But this novel’s power is transcendent. Told in an exquisitely distinctive and nuanced voice, it reaches deep into the universal human condition and engages the core yearning of us all: our yearning for a self, for an identity, for a place in the universe.”—Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
“Black Cloud Rising is the story of a minor engagement in the Civil War, a footnote in most history books, but it is the story of a major part of American history: the hard fought, still continuing battle of African Americans to rise from slavery to equality. From a single time and place, like a hologram it generates a three-dimensional picture of the difficulties, complexities, and nuances faced by Black people then and now. If you like history, if you want to better understand the struggle for equality, no matter your personal history or race, and if you want a good story, read this book. It’s a triple threat.”—Karl Marlantes, New York Times-bestselling author of Matterhorn
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