Alliance Française de Bristol will have its first book club (son club de lecture) on 12th April 2018 at 1pm or at 7pm. You choose your time!
Kif, the title of the book by Laurent Chalumeau, is the name of a night club (une boîte de nuit), on the Côte d’Azur, and it is the pivot of the story. Kif is an Arab word which means hashish, so this immediately sets the scene!
Georges Clounet, who was un CRS ( policeman in the riot police, but Georges worked in embassies) has just retired and is now looking for a quiet and honest life thanks to his savings which should have been well invested by his brother-in-law. It does not turn out quite like this…… he finds himself rather unexpectedly the owner of Kif which is a nest for drug dealers (trafiquants de drogue) , pimps (proxénètes) and bent coppers (policiers ripoux). How is he going to cope?
We’re going to meet an ex-porn actor turned pimp, a Saoudi billionaire who wants to emulate DSK on the Riviera, a French man converted to Islam who thinks that he’ll soon be an imam, an extreme right wing town councillor who is convinced she’ll teach everyone a lesson, among other characters whom we follow with great glee .… And to cap it all a million euros in cash is attracting rather a lot of people….
Large fresco where all the extremists are going to find themselves in trouble. Comedy and humour bring a permanent smile to the reader…. A real page turner!
All the plots and all the protagonists join up in a very clever way towards the end.
The vocabulary is very colourful, from time to time the author juggles with slang and verlan. Verlan is a form of slang where the letters of a word are muddled up.
Here is a small dictionary of verlan:
Flic: keuf
Femme: meuf
Fou: ouf
Bizarre: zarbi
Louche: chelou
Beur: ( son of an immigrant from the Maghreb, born in France): rebeu
Moche: cheum
Lourd : relou
Mec: keum
À fond: à donf
Laisse tomber: laisse béton
Pourri: ripou
Have fun!!!! Amusez-vous bien !
And come and share your comments with us on 12th April. Do let us know which session you prefer below. In Bath? We also have a book club in Bath.