D’où nous venons
“From my vantage point at the crossroads of two cultures, two languages, I have never found a French equivalent of the German word Heimat”, writes Géraldine Schwarz at the start of this lengthy historical fresco running to nearly 500 pages. And she is right, as “chez soi” refers to a dimension of identity, both local and regional, a dimension of the French word “pays” (country) in the 18th-century meaning of the word, which France has spent more than two...