World Without A Visa

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Devrim's picture
Devrim
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Joined: 15-07-06
Jul 6 2008 08:07
World Without A Visa
Nick Heath wrote:
That year marked the republication of many of his books in France, including Planète sans visa. The background to this book is the situation in Marseilles in 1940, peopled with black marketeers, collaborators and fascists on one hand, and on the other Jews, refugees, anti-fascists seeking a visa to escape France. The book is filled with immense compassion for the refugees, and somehow he describes them individually, in a whole range of accents. As this century ends, and as we remember the great waves of refugees produced by the world wars, and gaze in horror at the mass exoduses in the Balkans and East Timor, this book is a testament for all the wretched of the earth. With a bit of luck, someone will translate it into English.

I was given an English copy of this yesterday, published in 1949.

Devrim

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Alf
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Jul 6 2008 23:28

It's been available in English for years. I don't have my copy with me but I will get some more details.

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fnbrill
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Jul 7 2008 00:26

Evidently it was Norman Mailer who got World Without... published in the US as a series on new European writiers. When I was around the ICC New York members they told me of meeting Malaquis, who took them to meet Mailer.

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Melmoth
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Jul 7 2008 10:41

Dear Comrades

Planet Sans Visa, is indeed a wonderful novel and I would urge all libcom comrades and indeed anyone interested in the political history of the communist left and also anarchism to read it. (try cheap editions in english available from Abe Books available under a fiverIt certainly decribes the situation of comrades in France (without official residence and work permits to live and struggle in the most difficult situation.Unlike, Serge, Breton and co. without any real chance to escape Marseilles and assignment to the camps, hense the title!) Also decribes the political evolution of various political tendencies (left Communist, Trotskyist and Anarchist) isolateted and working at the "Croch Fruits" factory.
Malaquais was a very close friend and comrade of Marc Chirik (one of the originators of the early ICC) and a member alongside Malaquais of the Gauche Communiste de France who published Internationalisme.
Good reading!
melmoth

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Alf
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Jul 8 2008 10:07

Just to add: Marc Laverne, one of the central characters in the novel, is Mark Chirik, and some of the incidents described are taken directly from the experience of the group he helped to organise in Marseilles (French Fraction of the Communist Left, later the GCF)