Perhaps the timing of the book, released during troubled times of economic crisis and inequality has rung a bell for the people of France. Maybe it’s the fact that the author is a holocaust survivor almost a century old -- former spy, escapee from a concentration camp, then Resistance fighter for the rest of WWII -- which lends credibility to his message. Maybe it's the poetic prose. Whatever the reason, Indignez Vous! by Stéphane Hessel is the #1 bestselling book on Amazon.fr, and has been for some time. The book has sold over 600,000 in just three months.
Coming to US, should be $4 or $5.
It will be interesting to see if Indignez-vous! becomes a bestseller and Hessel
Indignez Vous! (Cry Out! or Get Angry!) by Stéphane Hessel:
This booklet by a socialist who is also a French Ambassador is the publishing sensation of the year. A translation is here
http://indignez-vous-cry-out-hessel.blogspot.com/ . At 29 pages (only 13 of which are text) and a cost of only 3 euros, the outraged essay of a 93-year-old man, The book has sold over 600,000 in just three months, much to the shock and delight of Hessel’s small, left-wing publishers, who are more accustomed to print runs in the hundreds than hundreds of thousands. You should be able to get a copy of this insurrectionary little book to wave around (and read of course) by ordering ISBN ISBN 291193976X . That's the French version. An English translation is here: http://indignez-vous-cry-out-hessel.blogspot.com/2011/01/english-translation.html QUOTES FROM STEPHANE HESSEL'S "INDIGNEZ-VOUS!":
"I think, naturally, that terrorism is unacceptable; but it is necessary to acknowledge that when people are occupied by forces immensely superior to their own, popular reaction cannot be altogether bloodless."
"However, to proclaim 'violence is not effective' is more important than to know whether one must condemn or not those who devote themselves to it."
"...not this society of immigrants without papers -- expulsions, suspicion regarding the immigrants. Not this society where they call into question social security and national health and pension plans. Not this society where mass media are in the hands of the rich."
"...the problem is the power of money, so much opposed by the Resistance, and of the big, boldfaced, selfish man, with his own servants in the highest spheres of the State."
"... it was necessary to keep an ear open towards communism to compensate against American capitalism...."
"There is certainly another comprehension of history. It says progress is made by "freedom," competition, striving for "always more"; it can be as if living in a destructive hurricane."
"To the young people, I say: Look around you, you will find issues that justify your indignation — facts about treatment of immigrants, of "illegal" immigrants, of the Roma...."
"That Jews can, themselves, perpetrate war crimes is unbearable. Alas, history does not give enough examples of people who draw lessons from their own history."
"Also, let us always be called in a truly peaceful insurrection against means of mass communication that offer as a vista for our youth only the consumption of mass trivia, contempt of the weakest and the culture, a generalized amnesia, and the hard competition of all against all."
The complete translation of the text is at
http://indignez-vous-cry-out-hessel.blogspot.com/2011/01/english-translation.html . INDIGNEZ-VOUS! GET ANGRY! CRY OUT
by Stephane Hessel
After 93 years, it is almost the final act. The end is not very far any more. But it still leaves me a chance to be able to remind others of what acted as the basis of my political engagement. It was the years of resistance to the Nazi occupation -- and the program of social rights worked out 66 years ago by the National Council of the Resistance!
It is to Jean Moulin [murdered founder of the Council] that we owe, as part of this Council, the uniting of all elements of occupied France -- the movements, the parties, the labor unions -- to proclaim their membership in Fighting France and to the only leader that it acknowledged, General Gaulle. From London, where I had joined de Gaulle in March 1941, I learned that this Council had completed a program and adopted it on March 15th, 1944, that offered for liberated France a group of principles and values on which would rest the modern democracy of our country. [Note 1]
These principles and these values, we need today more than ever. It is up to us to see to it, all together, that our society becomes a society of which we are proud, not this society of immigrants without papers -- expulsions, suspicion regarding the immigrants. Not this society where they call into question national retirement and health plans. Not this society where mass media are in the hands of the rich. These are things that we would have refused to submit to if we had been the true heirs of the National Council of the Resistance.
From 1945, after a dreadful drama [WWII], it was an ambitious resurrection of society to which the remaining contingent of the Council of the Resistance devoted itself. Let us remember them while creating national health and pensions plans such as the Resistance wished, as its program stipulated, "a full plan of French national health and social security, aimed at assuring all citizens
1
Eleven more pages here:
http://indignez-vous-cry-out-hessel.blogspot.com/2011/01/english-translation.html /
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