The New Internationals

A stunning historical novel of post-war Paris thatinterweaves a coming-of-age story, a cross-cultural romance, and a portrait ofthe international youth at a definitive moment in contemporary history

Paris, 1947. The city, recovering from the war, is brimmingwith young international students –African, Indochinese, Arab, as well asAmerican and French – balancing on the precipice of a new world. CecileRosenbaum, a young Jewish girl quickly developing her own intellectual andpolitical ideals, meets Minette – a feisty, French-born girl of Senegalesedescent – on the bus to a Communist Youth Conference. There, she meets andbegins to fall in love with Seb, who arrived from West Africa with his sisterat just seven years old.

As Seb toils for the exams that will permit him to studyFrench architecture at the Parisian university Beaux-Arts, he also begins todig into his roots in Dahomey, the West African kingdom where he came from.Cecile struggles at her job at the Louvre, clashes with her white, Jewishfamily, and reckons with her memories of a childhood under Nazi occupation andher fierce dedication to her new political ideologies. Seb and Cecile findthemselves entangled, and along the course of the novel they lose and find eachother again – in the corners of jazz clubs, at a Louis Armstrong concert, inthe square where Seb’s exam scores will be posted, and, finally, at a protestthat turns shockingly violent.

Nuanced, powerful, and sharply realized, The NewInternationals is a brilliant work of historical fiction that celebratesthe awakening of the post-colonial movements of the 20th century andinternational youth population in Paris who rose up – and came together – inthe beginnings of a vibrant political moment.