Remembering "The Seine was Red"

The Seine was Red is a novel written by Leïla Sebbar about the peaceful demonstration of Parisian Algerians, which turned into a real massacre and allegedly coloured the Seine red.
Leïla Sebbar herself has an Algerian background. Her father is Algerian, and her mother is French. She had difficulty talking with her father about Algiers, because she did not speak his language, Arabic and he was not able to speak out in French.

This theme of silence is fully explored in the novel. The main character, Amel, is an Algerian girl who was born and raised in France. Her mother and grandmother talk a lot about Algiers, in Arabic, which Amel cannot understand because she went to school in France and she never learned Arabic.

Her mother and grandmother don't want to talk to her about the things they have experienced, one of which is the Paris demonstration of 17 October 1961. Her grandmother always says that she will tell Amel later, when the time is right. The time, however, never seems right. Amel has to find other ways to learn about her own family history. She has never heard about the Paris demonstration, because this event was not remembered in French national history at the time.


Amel's friend, Louis, makes a film about the situation of 17 October 1961 and Amel's mother speaks about her memories of this day. Amel's mother could not tell her own daughter about these memories, but she can tell them to the potential audience of the film. Amel sees this film and is surprised at her mother's memories. Due to the film, Amel wants to see the different sites that her mother talked about for herself, and runs away from home to go on a weeklong trip to Paris.


For my class in college, I had to write an essay on this novel. I had to find two academic articles which discussed this novel and I had to make an assessment on the usefulness of the two articles.

I have added this to this review, because it adds to the full understanding of the novel in my opinion.

I read two articles: Laila Amine's "Double Exposure: The Family Album and Alternate Memories in Leïla Sebbar's The Seine was Red"; and Robyn Banton's "Dire, Voir, Savoir: Remembering the Paris Massacre in Leïla Sebbar's La Seine était Rouge."

I will not explain what happens in the novel more than what I have written before, I will add a part of what I thought of the novel in general at the end.

Laila Amine’s article on The Seine was Red focuses on the different modes of remembrance in the novel, and mainly on a new mode of remembrance. Amine argues in her article that The Seine was Red “juxtaposes a familial mode of remembrance with a national one and proposes a different model of memory-making.” (181-182) The familial mode of remembrance and the national mode of remembrance are both present in The Seine was Red, but are presented in a different way. The national mode is present in monuments, museums and plaques, while the familial mode is present in films, testimonial accounts and graffiti (182).

The main argument of Amine’s article entails the “different model of memory-making”, which Sebbar proposes (182). Amine explains that in The Seine was Red the familial and national memories or histories are explored through dissonance (191). Sebbar chooses the genre of the family album to be able to explore the same event “narrated from multiple perspectives and temporalities.” (189) Amine explains that by narrating the event from different perspectives, which do not completely overlap, Sebbar shows that neither familial nor national history is constant or linear (191). I agree with the premise of dissonance, the memories in the novel are somewhat different from each other. In my opinion, this dissonance is used to show that there is no real and ultimate ‘truth’ to get from memories alone. Ultimately, I think this was the point Amine was making. She argues that because the memories of the witnesses differ, the reader is forced to look differently at the past, not just the past of the Paris massacre, but in general.

In my opinion, the familial and national mode of remembrance come together in the character of Amel, mainly through the development she goes through to get to know her past. This is because she is a French girl, with an Algerian background. Amel doesn’t know about her family history at first, but she learns the French national history in school which means that she at first only has access to the national history of France. After seeing Louis’ film on the Paris massacre, she knows more about her family history and because of this, sees the monuments, museums etc. in a different light. Amel changes in the course of the novel, because she receives more information about her past. She is forced to look at things she has known forever, like the different places in Paris, differently. At the same way, the reader is forced to rethink the past, to look at it differently. The reader needs to look at his or her own history and realise that there is no real national history because memories are dissonant and not constant. Amine says that Sebbar notices that people have to realise who represents the memories people deal with, and realise that these memories might be conflicting with someone else’s (190).

Robyn Banton has also written an article on The Seine was Red, and mainly focuses on the different ways the post-memory generation remembers the past. Banton argues that “a multidirectional conception of memory requires not only engaging with lieux de mémoire (as Rothberg convincingly proposes), but also involves a multilayered (textual, oral, visual, and embodied) approach to historical knowledge.” (361) According to Banton, Sebbar uses a multi-layered approach by using both linguistic narratives and visual techniques. She uses these different approaches to historical knowledge to show that people have preferences for certain types of knowledge and to show how these preferences limit our understanding of the past (366). As with the article of Amine, Banton argues that Sebbar forces the reader to look at history differently. Looking at history through a multi-layered approach, as with looking at the past through differing memories, would result in reconceptualizations of histories.

I agree with the argument Banton gives, in order to understand the past, all features of that past need to be explored. Banton says that in The Seine was Red, Amel links knowing (‘savoir’) with seeing (‘voir’). Amel thinks of ‘voir’ as being the best indicator of knowing one’s past (365-366). Most people are inclined to view one of the approaches as the most useful, or the most reliable. By using both visual techniques and linguistic narratives, Sebbar forces the reader to see the past of the Paris massacre in multiple ways. Even though I agree with parts of the argument given by Banton, namely that Sebbar forces the reader to look at history differently, I don’t think that looking at the past in multiple ways or through more than one medium is new. Moreover, I think Sebbar uses the film, or visual techniques, not because of the fact that she thinks people need to see the past through more than one medium, but because of the theme of silence.

In line with this course, I think that the arguments given by Laila Amine are more useful. The arguments given by Amine can be useful, because she proposes a new mode of remembrance. This new mode of remembrance can help better understand the past and help better understand the memories of people. By introducing a new mode of remembrance, dissonance, memories from multiple perspectives can be used and can exist next to each other. Dissonance also helps us understand the way memories work better, memories are not chronological, not linear and not constant. The theory of dissonance makes history entirely different, by not seeing history as something on which people all must agree. Dissonance allows people to disagree with the national history.

The argument of Banton is somewhat in line with the arguments given by Amine, but in my opinion the multi-layered approach has not been worked out enough. Sebbar has used a multi-layered model in her writing, but this is, in my opinion, not the way she proposes people need to see the history of the Paris massacre.

I think The Seine was Red can be useful in understanding the way memories work, because of what I have written about the article by Laila Amine.

I thought the way the novel was structured was good for the goal of the novel. The purpose of the novel was to make clear that memories are not structured clearly or chronologically, which this novel was not. It was chronological in parts, but it definitely was not structured clearly in my opinion. Everything was connected to every other thing, which made it difficult to read.

Overall, my opinion of this novel is high. I thought the novel was well written, even though I didn't understand the ultimate goal of the novel at the beginning or even when I had finished the novel. The purpose only became clear when I had read the articles.

Works cited:
   Amine, Laila. “Double Exposure: The Family Album and Alternate Memories in Leïla
Sebbar’s The Seine was Red.” Culture, Theory and Critique, vol. 53, no. 2, 2012,
DOI: 10.1080/14735784.2012.680256. Accessed 4 December 2017.
   Banton, Robyn. “Dire, Voir, Savoir: Remembering the Paris Massacre in Leïla Sebbar’s La
Seine était Rouge.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, vol. 18, no. 4,
2014, DOI: 10.1080/17409292.2014.938498. Accessed 4 December 2017.
   Sebbar, Leïla. The Seine was Red: Paris, October 1961. Translated by Mildred Mortimer,
Indiana University Press, 1999.