UN HOMME SANS TITRE

"If you were so attached to your worker's card, it's undoubtedly because you were a man without a title. You were born deprived of any title to property or citizenship, and have known only transportation and residence titles. Title in Latin means inscription. And if you were indeed inscribed somewhere, alas, it was only to erase you. You were on the endless list of men to be crushed at work, like so many others before you to be kneaded in the trenches."

In reading Misère de la Kabylie, a report published by Camus in 1939, Xavier Le Clerc discovers the destitute conditions in which his father grew up. The author traces the story of this courageous man, absent and mute for so long, who arrived from Algeria in 1962, hired as a laborer at the Société métallurgique de Normandie. This captivating testimony is a cry of revolt against injustice and organized misery, but it also lets us hear a soothing voice that invites us to reflect on notions of identity and integration.