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2022 SHORTLIST #03. The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana
Maryse Condé, (2020, WORLD EDITIONS)
--- YouTube
Dramatic Recitation
https://youtube.com/shorts/nlTKE_OVABU?feature=share
Musical Actor.
Jong-sun Choi
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15 p.
They got the impression of being brutally dragged down and forced to leave the warm and tranquil abode where they had lived for many weeks.
27 p.
From that day on Ivan and Ivana realized they belonged to the most underprivileged category of the population, the ones anyone could insult as they liked.
38 p.
We know, too, that in order to be happy on this earth we need to shut our eyes to a good many things
51 p.
“I think of you all day long. I wonder what you are doing, what you are thinking. When I imagine your thoughts they end up becoming mine. All things considered, I am you.”
63 p.
“One day we’ll leave. We’ll go somewhere else.”
“Where do you want us to go?” Ivana said, astonished.
“I don’t know. But we’ll go to a place more just and more humane.”
164 p.
All the horror of the world was revealed to him. The world seemed to be divided into two camps: the West and their lackeys, and the rest.
188 p.
Around 10 p.m. he returned home on the regional express metro with Ivana. Men and women slept on the seats, tired out. Was this the life he had dreamed of? Oh yes, the world had to be destroyed and started all over again.
202 p.
I lived my sister and I were the only Catholics and I always felt foreign, out of place.
204 p.
He who had never heard of the expression “second and third generation” immediately understood its meaning. These teenagers had never been to the country of their ancestors. It was unknown territory. Born in France, they believed themselves to be French, proud at having built the Eiffel Tower or having dug the Saint-Martin canal.
212 p.
He knew all too well there was no place for him in this country which proclaimed so generously to be the home of human rights. If he disappeared who would even notice? Ivana perhaps. Then she would find consolation nestling her forehead against Maylan’s breast.
227 p.
You’re twins. In other words, A single person split in two and divided into two different bodies. You can’t be considered like everyone else, like normal people.
244 p.
Isn’t life surprising? It has a sense of humor which doesn’t make everyone laugh.
251 p.
According to him the sad fate of Ivana was blowing us an ill wind. Nowadays, it’s a well-known fact, very few people spend their entire life from birth to death in their homeland; there are no longer borders which lock you in till kingdom come; in other words, no longer a pattern of life all mapped out.
263 p.
“The truth doesn’t exist. We lawyers see it every day. There’s the truth spoken by the accused, the truth spoken by the plaintiff, and the truth spoken by the witnesses, and we have to navigate and find a compromise between all their statements.”
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