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Didier de Cauwelaert. Un aller simple Paris. Albin Michel. 1994. 195 pages. 89 F. ISBN 2-226-07010-9.
With each page the reader becomes more convinced that the Prix Goncourt given to Didier de Cauwelaert for Un aller simple was an award for the values that suffuse the work. The author has essentially shaped his narrative into a demonstration of the virtues of patience, tolerance, compassion, and reconciliation. The entire plot works up to a key moment in which Aziz, who has spent all his life in the poorest neighborhoods of Marseilles, reaches a mining-town-in-decline in Lorraine to effect the reconciliation of the Schneider family to their deceased son, who had come to find them an embarrassment as he moved up the civil-service career ladder in Paris.
The...