Jean Michel Guenassia: "The Incorrigible Optimists Club"This is a novel about a group of eastern europeans who because of different reasons are living in exile in Paris in the nineteensixties. They are coming from several different countries and have very different political opinions and personal stories. Most of them are well educated, but their educations are not recognized by the french authorities, and they survive as best they can as taxidrivers, cleaning staff workers, waiters etc. What they have in common is being poor, that they have left everything and can never return to it, that they enjoy playing chess and are incorrigible optimists. From time to time the little cafe where they meet to play chess is visited by Jean Paul Sartre, who also from time to time support them economically, something most of them only reluctantly accepts, as they all have escaped from various communist regimes and disapprove strongly Sartres being a communist. The whole story is told by a fifteen-sixteen year old collegian who has grown acquainted with them and whom they teach to play chess. Jean-Michel Guenassia is a french-algerian author born in Algeria in 1950. He is educated as a lawyer, but has only worked as a such in six years. He has written some scripts for television dramas and up to 2017 six novels. "The Incorrigible Optimists" was publishet in 2009 and for it he has been rewarded the french litterature prize Prix Goncourt des lycéens |
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