In the world of This Strange Eventful History, places and spaces symbolize identity and home. Paris is one of the novel’s first settings and is a significant place for the family. The story begins as nine-year-old François composes a letter to his father in Greece and contemplates whether to mention the Nazi occupation of France’s capital city. As he writes, he reflects on what Paris means to him: As a young French Algerian boy, he understands himself as French and Paris as his capital city. However, as a member of the pieds-noirs community, he identifies himself as French Algerian. He muses that he has never, in fact, been to France and that for him France is a kind of abstraction. He has a much more concrete sense of himself as French Algerian, although he spent the bulk of his youth outside Algeria too. Paris and France thus symbolize a fraught cultural identity that is difficult to access but always in the background for French Algerians.

Algeria too becomes a complex symbol. For Gaston and Lucille’s generation, it initially symbolizes home and identity. More so than their children or grandchildren, they understand their identity through the