Migration, reparation, dictation: Faïza Guène’s La discrétion engages the offence of oversight

Abstract In her sixth novel, La discrétion , Faïza Guène paints the fragmentary fictionalized portrait of her own mother, a 70-year-old Algerian-born woman who goes unnoticed in many contexts in contemporary France where she has lived for forty years. The violent memories of her childhood during the Algerian War intertwine with the realities of her daily life in the Parisian suburbs and the challenges faced by her children show how difficult it can be to find a place in this country when you hail from an Arab and Muslim background. This book emerged from the deep emotion the author felt when she formulated the phrase “Mort de discrétion” to describe her own father’s passing. This articulation of the end of a migrant’s life is in fact the culmination of multiple erasures, humiliations, and injustices that have accumulated over the years and, in response, Guène turns in an unprecedentedly personal text to focus on her mother in order to “repair the offense of oversight,” give voice to a woman who has too often been silenced, and work through the past to lessen the effects of “transgenerational trauma” by reviving stories and preserving them for posterity.