Political Essay by 93-Year-Old Tops Christmas
Bestseller List in France

Resistance hero Stéphane Hessel stuns
publishing world with 30-page work that calls
on readers to be outraged about society

By Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Guardian (UK)
December 26, 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/26/stephane-hessel-93-french-bestseller

Proving that age is no boundary to publishing success,
the French book world has been taken by storm by a
surprise Christmas bestseller: a political call to arms
by Stéphane Hessel, 93.

The unlikely publishing sensation is a former
resistance hero whose 30-page essay, Indignez-vous!,
calls on readers to get angry about the state of modern
society.

Launched in October by Indigène, a small publisher
working out of an attic in Montpellier, southern
France, the book had a tiny first print-run, 6,000, and
sold for _3, unprecedentedly cheap in a country where
book prices are regulated and kept high by the law.

Hessel's success has stunned France. After two months
on the bestseller lists, the book has spent five weeks
at number one, beating Michel Houellebecq's award-
winning latest novel La Carte et le Territoire and a
host of Christmas fiction. It has sold 600,000 copies
and - publishers predict it will reach a million.
Translations are underway for Italy and other European
markets.

The book's soaring sales reflect a general mood of
French exasperation at the social inequalities of
Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency. But the phenomenon is
mostly down to Hessel's charisma and his life story.

Hessel was born in Berlin in 1917 and emigrated to
France aged seven. His free-spirited mother, Helen
Grund-Hessel, inspired the novel Jules et Jim, which
became Francois Truffaut's film about a love-triangle
of two male friends and a woman who loves them both.
During the Nazi occupation of France, Hessel joined the
French resistance, was caught, tortured and and
deported to Buchenwald and Dora concentration camps
where he escaped hanging. After the war, he helped to
draft the universal declaration of human rights and
later became a diplomat.

Hessel's book argues that French people should re-
embrace the values of the French resistance, which have
been lost, which was driven by indignation, and French
people need to get outraged again. "This is an appeal
to citizens, young and old, to take responsibility for
the things in our society that don't work," he said. "I
wish every one of you to find your own reason for
indignation. It's precious." Hessel's reasons for
personal outrage include the growing gap between the
very rich and the very poor, France's shocking
treatment of its illegal immigrants, the need to re-
establish a free press, protecting the environment, the
plight of Palestinians and the importance of protecting
the French welfare system. He calls for peaceful and
non-violent insurrection.

Sylvie Crossman, a former Le Monde foreign
correspondent who co-founded Hessel's publishers, said
the book was like a new, "adapted" version of Charles
de Gaulle's rallying resistance appeal from London on
18 June 1940. She said the book had been a success
because it gave hope to people from a real fighter who
was not just an armchair intellectual.

___________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate