Using ethnographic field data from the Larzac plateau in Southern France, Alexander and Sonia Alland document one of the longest and most successful popular protests in modern French history - the Larzac movement. More than a record of events, the book describes the transformation from the early 1970s of rural defiance into a symbol of left-wing action for France and the world. This revised edition examines the activities of the movement since 1995, including the demonstrations at the Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organisation, the 'great hamburger war' against McDonalds, and the broadening of the movement to embrace struggles elsewhere, such as the anti-nuclear protests in French Polynesia. Particular attention is paid to the charismatic Jose Bove, who has become the figurehead and focus of the campaign during this period.
This account will be of particular interest to anthropologists and historians of contemporary France and Europe as well as students of protest and social movements, and of contemporary politics in general

Using ethnographic field data from the Larzac plateau in Southern France, Alexander and Sonia Alland document one of the longest and most successful popular protests in modern French history - the Larzac movement. More than a record of events, the book describes the transformation from the early 1970s of rural defiance into a symbol of left-wing action for France and the world. This revised edition examines the activities of the movement since 1995, including the demonstrations at the Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organisation, the 'great hamburger war' against McDonalds, and the broadening of the movement to embrace struggles elsewhere, such as the anti-nuclear protests in French Polynesia. Particular attention is paid to the charismatic Jose Bove, who has become the figurehead and focus of the campaign during this period.
This account will be of particular interest to anthropologists and historians of contemporary France and Europe as well as students of protest and social movements, and of contemporary politics in general

Iraqi poet Salah Al Hamdani has lived a remarkable life. The author of some forty books in French and Arabic, he began life as a child laborer, with little or no education. As a political prisoner under Saddam Hussein, he learned to read and write Arabic; once he was released form prison, he continued to work against the regime, ultimately, at age twenty-one, choosing exile in Paris. He now writes in French, but he remains a poet of exile, of memory, wounded by the loss of his homeland and those dear to him. This landmark collection gathers thirty-five years of his writings, from his first volume in Arabic, Memory of Embers, to his latest collection, written originally in French, For You I Dream. It offers English-language readers their first substantial overview of Al Hamdani's work, fired by the fight against injustice and shot through with longing for the home to which he can never return.

Now in paperback, Marie Bronsard's strikingly original memoir reweaves the history of her family-and the legend of her grandmother-leaving no stone unturned and no skeleton in the closet. Egocentric and domineering, Bronsard's grandmother was once a vibrant and sensual beauty. In Indochina at the end of the Second World War, she thrived in the social life of the French colony, but her young soldier husband sought a quieter existence, finding solace in the companionship of their adolescent daughter, Bronsard's mother. The consequences of this choice reverberate throughout the family. But far from being an airing of grievance or dirty laundry, Bronsard's memoir has the air of catharsis-here, the pain, secrets, and comic moments of Bronsard's family are remembered with gentle humor, understanding, and affection. A wry irony tempers emotion, and it is in these pages that the author, at last, finds it possible to name the woman of the legend and perhaps bring her grandmother a measure of peace.