In Mariana's room, The novel by the Israeli writer Aharon Appefeld, published in Israel in 2006, and translated in France two years later at Editions de l'Olivier, a mother entrusted, in 1943, her 12 -year -old boy to a childhood friend, a Ukrainian prostitute by the name of Mariana. The city that houses the brothel in which she lives is never named, but it could be Czernowitz, the native Romanian city of Appefeld, passed under Soviet domination when the story takes place. Like the boy, Hugo, devoid of last name, could be, in part, little Aharon. From his cache, Hugo learns the extermination of the city's Jews and the departure of the German troops in the face of the advance of the Red Army, a page of history of which he is the helpless witness.
Mariana's room is, like the whole work of Appelfeld, written in Hebrew. The novelist could have chosen the Yiddish of his grandparents or the German of his parents, but he always favored the language of the country he joined in 1946. The film that French director Emmanuel Finkiel drew from his story (indoors on April 23) is, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he shot in Ukrainian, a way of paying tribute to this people, with whom the future novelist, as a child, “More spirituality and holiness” that he had known in his own family of assimilated Jews.
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Source: Lemonde