Promised Lands

Jean-Michel Guenassia — a writer who has rapidly gained popularity in recent years, author of the novels «The Club of Irrepressible Optimists», «The Amazing Life of Ernesto Che» and «Deceive-Death». Critics around the world unanimously recognized «The Club of Irrepressible Optimists» as a brilliant book, and French high school students awarded the author the Goncourt Prize. When Guenassia was writing «The Club», he already understood that the novel would have a continuation, but for many years he did not know how this story would develop. And then he came to Moscow — and everything became crystal clear… Paris, 1960s. Michel Marini, a teenager from «The Club of Irrepressible Optimists», has grown older and is now studying at university. A romantic period has arrived in his life and in the entire world, an innocent time of love and hope. The air is filled with the promise of freedom — that same «optimism». The Club of Irrepressible Optimists, however, has been scattered all over the world — and Michel also faces wanderings in search of his personal dreams and the utopias of the entire 20th century. Algeria and Morocco, Italy, Israel, and Russia, the intersection of lives, lost and regained ideals, dreams, love, and forgiveness: in Jean-Michel Guenassia's new novel, a continuation of «The Club of Irrepressible Optimists», the heroes eternally seek their promised land, where the most important thing — is not the land, but the promise.