Éditions Québec Amérique, 2020

This historical novel recounts a dark chapter in Canadian history. During the First World War, injustices and crimes against humanity were committed against immigrants whose only transgression was that they were born in enemy countries. I recommend this book because reading it is a duty of remembrance. It should be read by all young people in Quebec, in fact, regardless of their origins.

Reserve

Éditions Gallimard, 1975

This novel tells the story of Momo, a young Arab adopted by Madame Rosa, an old Jewish woman who gives him all the love and attention that his own parents were unable to give him. Momo becomes attached to Rosa, and it is he who ends up caring for and supporting her through her illness so that she doesn’t have to die in the hospital. In this novel, love transcends cultural and religious faultlines; it offers the reader an enlightened vision of living together.

Reserve

Éditions Fides, 2018

Rachida M’Faddel draws on her great talent to successfully reinvent the notion of living together through literature, where parliamentary commissions have failed. Above and beyond their cultural and religious differences, the characters in Résidence Séquoia are imbued with the same burning desire to express themselves and tell their stories. Each becomes an object of curiosity to the other. But listening to and discovering the other’s humanity also entails the risk of being shocked at times. In this residence, it is the shocks that spark curiosity and shape relationships.

Reserve

Éditions du CRAM, 2021

The best way to overcome adversity is to transform it by lending it greater meaning. And to achieve that, psychologist Danielle Perrault invites us to stimulate our brain’s right hemisphere, whose role is to create room for the imagination, intuition and dreams. Her approach is backed up by real stories, which she tells wonderfully. The goal of this therapeutic exercise is to cease being the victim in a story by reinventing the narrative.

Reserve