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“My father’s story is of a child who ate roots to survive, then uprooted himself for us, his children, to root ourselves in the West. It was a wonderful sacrifice, and it’s a tribute to him and to his generation. My father’s story is nothing special in that regard. It’s the story of millions of migrants who came and worked in Europe, were used as cheap labor, and then, later on, were victimized, bullied and used as scapegoats for all the troubles we have to this day…I try to be as authentic as possible, but obviously bits have to be fictionalized to gel with one another. Also, I wasn’t around in the 1930s where the novel starts, so this is my vision of how things happened. Was there really a bird flying across the sky? Most likely, yes, but I don’t know. It’s different from my own memories of my childhood. So it is a novel, if we apply the definition of the genre, but it is as authentic as a memoir.” Read more...
Xavier Le Clerc, Novelist
