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.
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.
