To write to save a life. Louis Thiel file

Author's name: John Edgar Wideman Publisher: Dar Al-Mada for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2019 Literary classification: Novel Summary of the book: I never forgot how the world seemed filled with reassurance from my high place. I used to sit on my grandfather’s shoulders, holding onto him with my hands and knees, careful not to let his wide-brimmed brown hat fall, and Clement would pass by, that thin man, rushing out of Henderson’s barbershop. But in that time, in that very moment, on the streets of Homood, I knew nothing about Clement, except that I saw him limping clearly, dragging his feet in a wide shoe, and I glimpsed his ugly face, which looked terrifying with its deformed features, so much so that I was certain he would haunt my nightmares for years to come. I hear John French calling Clement, and Clement responds with a dull scowl that quickly turns into a vulgar sneer, and he opens his mouth, revealing a few remaining teeth, his lazy gaze fixed on us, penetrating our being, hovering over us, taking us to a distant place. That look made me realize that everything is calm in a neighborhood that can suddenly become disturbed and disappear. In 1955, after nearly nine years from that confrontation on Homood streets, when I was fourteen years old, I found myself looking at a photograph of the disfigured face of Emmett Tilley, which suddenly invaded my life as a fixed truth, settled in my soul just like Clement. If you don’t remember, I say that in 1955, Emmett Tilley, who was fourteen like me, took a train from a station in Chicago to visit his family in Mississippi. Weeks later, I brought his body back in a train returning to Chicago. Emmett Louis Tilley was killed because he was from the two towns, it was said that he harassed a white woman with a wolf-like voice. Wideman is a MacArthur Fellow, has won the Faulkner Prize for Fiction twice, and reached the finals of the National Book Award, the Critics’ Circle Award, and the National Book Award. He spends his life traveling between New York and France.