Des Hommes

The Wound (2015) is a novel by French author Laurent Mauvignier, first published in French as Des Hommes (“Men”) in 2009 and translated into English by husband-and-wife team David and Nicole Ball. Told in a fragmented, stream-of-consciousness style, the novel follows two middle-aged veterans of the Algerian War, Rabut and Bernard, as they wrestle with their traumatic memories.

In the novel’s opening section, “Afternoon,” Rabut attends the 60th birthday party of his cousin Solange, in a rural French village. The event begins well until Solange’s brother Bernard arrives.

Bernard, known to his family by the nickname Woodsmoke, is an alcoholic and a drifter. Except for Solange, the whole family has cut its ties to him. Solange continues to defend him and lend him money. Nevertheless, his presence is not welcome. Three decades ago, Bernard returned from Algeria with a colonial Pied-Noir wife. He subsequently abandoned her and their children, gradually alienating everyone else he knew with erratic and frightening behavior. For Rabut—who also fought in Algeria—Bernard’s visible trauma serves as an unwelcome reminder of his own repressed pain.



Nevertheless, the family uneasily attempts to welcome Bernard. The chilly truce does not last long. A French-Algerian family friend, Chefraoui, is present, and soon Bernard is harassing and insulting him in racist language. When Bernard is expelled from the party, he seeks out Chefraoui’s house and forces his way in,  frightening Chefraoui’s wife and young children and killing their dog.

In the next section, “Evening,” Rabut reflects on Bernard’s behavior at the party. He thinks about the “little promises” he and his fellow veterans in the family have made, implicitly or explicitly, not to bring the war home with them. As Rabut tries to sleep, Bernard’s voice breaks in on his consciousness and he begins to think back to the time of their conscription. The section ends as he remembers traveling by night-train to Marseille as a new recruit.

The next section, “Night,” is the book’s longest, comprising Bernard’s memories of the war. The section opens as Bernard’s unit sweeps down on a village where they believe rebels are being protected. The frightened soldiers behave brutally to mask their fear, while women and children are herded outside and lined up, shivering with terror. The soldiers search the houses, but they find neither rebels nor arms, nor any evidence of rebel activity. In frustration, Nivelle, a young soldier fatally shoots a little girl. Then the soldiers burn the village to the ground.



As they make their way to their next location, the smell of smoke clings to the soldiers’ clothes. Bernard thinks back to his childhood in a snow-bound French village and imagines how the villagers would respond if soldiers burned it to the ground. He wonders whether anything separates the French occupying forces in Algeria from the German forces which oppressed France during World War II.

Bernard is equally horrified when his unit finds the body of a French military doctor, flayed, and left to die by rebel fighters. Bernard and his fellow soldiers know that this will be their fate if they are captured, and it hardens them in their brutality.

Amid these horrors, Bernard meets Mireille, the Algerian-born daughter of a French colonist. Although the only country she has ever known is collapsing around her, she is a bold seducer, with all the confidence of a woman used to commanding a household full of servants. She is also looking for an escape route to France. Bernard proposes and they marry.



As the war grinds to a close, Bernard returns to France with his new wife. Used to luxury and domestic servants, Mireille regards her new life as a form of desperate poverty. She cannot keep house or cook, and she resents Bernard’s expectation that she should. Meanwhile, Bernard is beginning to crack under the strain of his trauma.

The final section, “Morning,” returns to Rabut in the early hours of the next day. He has wrestled all night with his conflicting instincts to sympathize with Bernard and to revile him. Now he decides that the loathes Bernard, simply because Bernard insists on serving as a living reminder of the past.

Rabut remembers his part in the final stages of the war. In 1961, shortly before independence, he was posted to the city of Oran. As it became clear that the rebels were winning, the French colonists were terrified, and the local Algerians went on the rampage. Rabut feels a pang to remember the Harkis, Algerian Muslims who threw in their lot with the French occupying forces rather than the rebels and found themselves caught in a difficult situation.



Victory is declared, and the celebrations of the Algerians make Rabut think of his parents, and how they might have celebrated when the Nazis withdrew from France. In the novel’s final moments, Rabut watches, unable to intervene, as the local Harkis are rounded up in the hundreds, forced to drink gasoline and then burnt alive by the victorious rebels.