Faladé, David Wright: The New Internationals

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.