jabariqueen:

lj-writes:

jabariqueen:

jabariqueen:

Truth be told, i’ve never read farenheit 451. I just read some kind of adaptation of the book where everything was the opposite : the world was all about books and all the tech was banned. The heroine was a deaf and mute girl.

ok i found the novel. it’s a french novel published in 1998, i don’t think there is an english translation. the novel is called Virus L.I.V 3 ou La Mort des Livres. I read it a long time ago so i couldn’t remember the plot really well, but now that i read the summary, i remember that it’s not just an “opposite farenheit 451″.

in this novel, the world is divided between the Lettrés (people who only care about paper books and literature) and the Zappeurs (who only use screens and who sometimes get cybernetic implants to enhance some of their abilities). The Lettrés are the one who run the world, but a mysterious Zappeur has created a virus that “kills” books.

The heroine, Allis, is a deaf and mute girl. She’s a Lettrée but she has to use screens to communicate, so the leader of the Lettrés hires her to infiltrate the Zapper community and find out who created the virus and how to stop it. If i remember correctly, she convinces a group of Zappeurs that she wants to become one of them to be able to get a cochlear implant because she’s deaf (even though i don’t think she actually wanted it). and of course during her mission she realizes that the world is not as black and white as she thought, and she becomes friends with the Zappeurs.

anyway it was a novel targeted toward young readers so the story was pretty basic and there was a predictable romance, but the concept is cool and i remember liking it a lot when i was in middle school.

@lj-writes

Is this Baby Boomers vs. Millennials: The Book? 😂 Though I’m sure it wasn’t generational im the book, since the heroine was a young Lettrée. It’s a cool concept!

Well if you want a generational conflict, there was also that french novel about young people under 25 y/o who start a revolution and start killing everyone over 25, and then Paris is divided in 2 cause it literally becomes a civil war.

The two main characters were a nonbinary person named Silence, the first to spark the revolution, and L’Immortel, a black boy determined to make Silence pay after they killed his girlfriend. And there is a war, and all the kids chose a new name for themselves and have become snipers, and the more adults you kill the more famous and respected you are.

The novel was very dark but from what i remember there was some deep and interesting reflexions on the generational gap, the way adults treat children, and the problems it can create.

I’m actually working on generational issues for part of my job and that’s super interesting. And a nb protagonist, wow! What was Silence’s pronoun in French? A French nb friend said it’s hard to find a working pronoun in their native language so I’m curious.

It’s also kind of sobering how English-centric our “international” discussions about books and fandom are and that there are whole trends and developments in other languages we’re missing. What gets translated is a tiny fraction of the whole.