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The program, One Book - One Federation, sponsored by the Federation supports French literacy throughout the United States. By encouraging the reading of one book by all chapters during a single year, the Federation is able to assist in the creation of a reading guide and encourage the formation of reading groups.
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“One Book, One Federation” 2011 choice:
“Le Banquier et le Perroquet” by Philippe Simiot.
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Le banquier et le perroquet (The Banker and the Parrot) :
Etienne Girard was born in 1750 to a family of modest means in Bordeaux, where his father owned a merchant ship. His birthplace was a prosperous port city that grew wealthier each year thanks to its wine, but even more so from its monopoly on Santo Domingo sugar and from the slave trade.
The eldest of nine, motherless at age 12, ill-favored in looks, and with a blind, drooping eye, Etienne was an unhappy child. He first set to sea on his father’s ship when he was 14, and 10 years later he won his license as a merchant marine captain. Girard then began his own shipping operation, made some bad business decisions, and vanished from his hometown, never to return.
In 1776 he settled in Philadelphia, where he opened a shop, and the following year decided to become a citizen of Pennsylvania. Etienne became Stephen. Thirty years later Stephen Girard was the richest man in the United States. As a shipping magnate he traded with China and had agencies all over the world. As a financier, he bought up stock in the First Bank of the United States and personally underwrote half the loan that funded the War of 1812 against England. He thus saved the young nation from bankruptcy, and perhaps from a military defeat of incalculable consequences.
A secretive, solitary man, childless, unhappy in his marriage, rightly suspected of being irreligious, Girard was disliked by his fellow citizens, who speculated about the origin of his wealth and the personal habits of the “little Frenchie.”
Upon his death in 1831 Girard bequeathed his vast fortune to a foundation dedicated to the support and education of orphans. Today a life-size statue of him stands before the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a major avenue in the city bears his name, and Girard College boarding school?where, at the behest of its benefactor, French must be taught?grants full scholarships to each of its 700 students.
The shadowy areas of this singular man’s life, both in his financial achievements and in the personal realm, inspired novelist Philippe Simiot to create an imaginary diary, Girard’s journal from 1776 to 1831, in which he reveals the truth about his dealings with money and women, and about his own deep nature.
Witness to the birth of the United States, moving in the same circles as Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, and later such French figures as Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, and Joseph Bonaparte, Girard had a privileged vantage point on a historic era in Franco-American relations. In these fictional musings he observes the actions of both sides with a sharp eye and uniquely independent judgment.
THE AUTHOR :
In his first career, under another name*, Philippe Simiot was an aeronautical engineer. He specialized in defense and space, in particular the Ariane rocket program, and became assistant director of the European Propulsion Society (SEP).
Upon reaching retirement age, the engineer turned novelist. Taking on the pen name used by his father, Bernard Simiot, who died in 1996, Philippe added two titles to the series Ces Messieurs de Saint Malo, created by the elder Simiot: Carbec, mon Empereur (Carbec, My Emperor) in 1999 and Carbec l’Américain (Carbec the American) in 2002.
It was in the course of research for these novels that he learned of 19th-century banker Stephen Girard, the first American multimillionaire, who was a native of Bordeaux. Simiot then conceived and wrote Le Banquier et le perroquet (The Banker and the Parrot: 2006), a fictional diary kept by Girard from 1776 to 1831, when he lived in Philadelphia. The novel evokes the birth of American democracy in lively prose and an original form, and received the highest award from Bordeaux’s Académie des Lettres the year it appeared.
In 2010 he published Une partie de zanzibar (A Round of Zanzibar). The title refers to a dice game played by colonial troops in the late 19th century and evokes the themes of Simiot’s novel: chance, fate and exoticism. The tale of an “shattered” Breton family, the book takes readers from Lorient (Brittany) to Nouméa, Bucharest and Cayenne, and ends on July 14, 1900, at the Universal Exposition in Paris. The social and political tensions within French society during that era, the stances of the church and the army, and the Dreyfuss Affair form the backdrop to this remarkable saga.
* Philippe Simionesco
1931?
Previous One Book - One Federation Selections:
2010 - Soeurs Chocolats by Catherine Velle
2009 - Héroïnes Françaises, 1940-1945: Courage, Force et Ingéniosité by Professor Monique Saigal
2007 - Victoire: les saveurs et les mots by Maryse Condé
2006 - Le gone du Châba by Azouz Begag.
2005 - Les âmes grises by Philippe Claudel.
2004 - Le testament Français by Andrei Makine.
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