Unsettling Closeness, Unsettled Memories: War Trauma and Memory Conflict in Nancy Huston's L'empreinte de l'ange

Abstract

Set in France during the Algerian War, Nancy Huston's L'empreinte de l'ange (1998) explores a turbulent relationship between a Jewish-Hungarian Holocaust survivor and a Nazi collaborator's daughter who, as a child, experienced war trauma in the form of Allied bombings and rape. This article examines the ethical complexities of remembrance that arise when opposing narratives of trauma are interwoven through the prism of affective intimacy. Focusing on their juxtaposition and the narrator's involvement, it argues that Huston compels readers to interpret the effects of trauma dialogically, beyond the victim-perpetrator dichotomy and the paradigm of "competitive memory" to which her characters succumb.