Groupe de lecture “Le passeur” de Stéphanie Coste

Once a month, the reading group meets up to discuss a couple of books selected in advance (from classical to contemporary French literature) and discovers other members’ views on them. Meetings take place at the Institut français d’Écosse, usually on the last Tuesday of the month.

About the book :

When you’ve made, as Seyoum cynically puts it, “hope your business,” become one of the biggest smugglers on the Libyan coast, and have your brain consumed by khat and alcohol, are you still capable of humanity?
This is the question that arises when yet another convoy arrives filled with desperate candidates for the crossing. With this particular convoy, her entire past suddenly comes flooding back: her family destroyed by the dictatorship in Eritrea, the forced recruitment in the Sawa camp, the scenes of torture, the flight, the imprisonment, her lost love…
Through the intertwined destinies of these migrants and their torturer, Stéphanie Coste paints a grand fresco of the history of a wounded continent. Her writing, of incredible force, cut with a billhook, with a breathless rhythm, draws us to the depths of human madness.