Nada
Jean-Patrick Manchette[Manchette] was like an electroshock to the chloroformed country of literature & the French thriller. — Jean-François Gérault
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This tour de force political thriller, told in Manchette's signature noir style, follows a group of far left extremists in the throes of post-1968 disillusionment.
The thrill of 1968 is long over, & the heavy fog of the 1970s has settled in. In Paris, however, the Nada gang—or groupuscule—still retains a militant attachment to its revolutionary dreams. Bringing together an anarchist orphaned by the Spanish Civil War, a Communist veteran of the French resistance, a frustrated high-school teacher of philosophy, a timid office worker, a terminal alcoholic, & one uncompromising young woman with a house in the country, Nada sets out to kidnap the American ambassador & issue a call to arms.
What could possibly go wrong?
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Jean-Patrick Manchette (1942–1995) was a genre-redefining French crime novelist, screenwriter, critic, & translator. Born in Marseille to a family of relatively modest means, Manchette grew up in a southwestern suburb of Paris, where he wrote from an early age.
In 1971 he published his first novel, a collaboration with Jean-Pierre Bastid, & embarked on his literary career in earnest, producing ten subsequent works over the course of the next two decades & establishing a new genre of French novel, the néo-polar (distinguished from the traditional detective novel, or polar, by its political engagement & social radicalism).