Filling in the Blanks: Memories of 17 October 1961 in Leïla Sebbar's La Seine était rouge

Leila Sebbar's La Seine etait rouge (1999) traces the attempts of three characters to uncover the suppression of Algerian demonstrators by the Parisian police on 17 October 1961, an event which has hitherto been concealed from two of the three characters by their families. This transmission of silence reflects the wider reluctance to remember the Algerian War on the part of the French state, which only officially acknowledged the war in 1999. Though a wave of commemoration with regard to this past was instigated in the 1990s, this breaking of the silence has not led to a calm levelling of memory, but to a turbulent surge of memories in which opposing representations of the past clash. Sebbar's novel underlines this instability, bringing to light a plurality of memories collected from various actors in the events of 17 October 1961. Through a close textual analysis of how La Seine etait rouge constructs a narrative of plurality and incompleteness, this article outlines how Sebbar exposes the intricacies of...