The 3 best books by the surprising Ivan Jablonka

Historical fiction is not always an open and, therefore, fertile field for historians or other popularizers in similar fields. Basically because When historical FICTION is written, the arduous task of conferring something more to the narrative is undertaken. Nothing more and nothing less than the mission of giving life to the protagonists and of making any epoch about which it is written habitable as a fourth dimension.

In Spain, authors such as Jose Luis Corral o louis clog. Others are shipwrecked between erudition, disclosure without more or the most aseptic description.

In the case of French historian Ivan Jablonka The assumption of the task of fictionalizing to novelize history ultimately meant discoveries and openings of very different paths. Because since publishing his first historical novel, Jablonka has ended up tackling very different themes that have earned him unexpected success, where it is assumed that narrating is more a matter of inspiration than academic training. The magic of the writer who ends up being discovered far removed from his initial assumptions...

Top 3 recommended books by Ivan Jablonka

Laëtitia or the end of men

Books made a chronicle of the ominous sometimes arrive from the most bloody reality. Storyteller cases like Laura Restrepo or others, and in this case Jablonka. Writers who send us, from meticulous research and the emotion of detail, anecdotes that do not transcend official investigations or newscasts. A sensitivity at the service of necessary causes that reconcile us with our world.

Because monsters cannot inhabit our world and act as if nothing, in the sense that everything remains in our memory like a short television cut on the news. The memory of these victims who fall into the clutches of the worst predators of our society are well worth a dignity, a memory turned into a book, a warning for sailors and an awareness of the shadows that loom over us more often than we think.

Laëtitia Perrais was eighteen years old when she was raped, murdered and dismembered on the night of January 18, 2011. The crime reached the newspapers and shocked France. This heartbreaking book addresses the macabre crime and the political, social and judicial reaction, but above all it reconstructs the story of the murdered girl.

Laëtitia or the end of men

By camping-car

Sometimes in the most agile form of a literature concise in its descriptions and agile in its development, we find ourselves with the weight of the deepest reflections.

That is in essence the formula of Jablonka, although more than a style it seems that it is simply a natural way of telling their stories, no matter how hard or intense those brushstrokes end up being that link the chapters from the subtle invitation to the reader to digest the scenes, the dialogues and the silences ...

But this book is not a new account of the tragic as in the case of Laëtitia. Not quite at least. Because the trip of the Jablonka family in a motorhome looks out into that paradise of childhood memories. Empowered in this case by the image of freedom and communion of a family launched to see the world through the south of a captivating Europe for all of them.

But of course the author, in such a personal story, also rescues that less friendly side. Because during that time of family leisure travel, of course the figures of their parents appear, especially that of their father, determined to burn happiness in his children. A childhood paradise from which he suffered when he was stripped of his parents in the abominable Nazi holocaust and on which the narrative gives a good account.

And the novel is composed precisely from those looks on both sides of the mirror, around a journey enjoyed to the extreme from the side of childhood and rescued in maturity by the same child who discovers new details in the memory of those parents far from the past.

The great memories of our life are flashes, perhaps idealized moments but evoked with that melancholy at times intoxicating. And Ivan is faithful to that fleeting construction of happiness, composing a jumping blog between memories, aromas, fleeting landscapes aboard the motorhome, conversations, songs and changing perspectives of childhood and maturity. A selective and fictionalized biography about one of those trips, those family adventures marked as essential passages in the book of our lives.

By camping-car

Righteous men

Nobody better than a historian like Jablonka to do a sincere exercise in reflection on the feminine in history, with the fringes and the burdens that reach today with their outstanding debts ...

Patriarchy, feminist revolution, egalitarian society: here are the concepts on which this ambitious essay by Ivan Jablonka focuses. If in the shocking chronicle Laëtitia or the end of men The author presented an extreme case of how far toxic masculinity can lead, here he extensively analyzes this issue from the historical, sociological and cultural perspectives.

The book addresses the origins of patriarchy in societies and religions, based on the fact that, not having the ability to procreate, man chose to appropriate control of society. This gives rise to toxic masculinities, which must be overcome by assuming new models not based on virility and violence.

It is the path to a truly egalitarian society, with gender justice, that leaves behind the patriarchal model. And this redefinition of masculinity is accompanied by the emancipation of women in matters such as lovemaking and conquests such as self-satisfaction and explicit consent. A brilliant and necessary book, which tackles a hot topic with a long look and without dogmatism.

Righteous men
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