While There Is All Poverty , in which the deep bond established by Madame Rosa, who earns her living by looking after the miserable children of prostitutes in a Parisian slum, with little Momo, who longs for affection and attention, is conveyed through the eyes of the child, tells the sadness of those who are destined to be on the streets, even though they are longing for a warm home.
It is therefore not surprising that Romain Gary, who poignantly conveys his intense love and devotion to his mother in I Had a Promise Made at Dawn, leaves the floor to Momo. Gary, who draws strength from this solid relationship and his own roots, immigrants, paperless, fugitives, criminals; He listens to a small heart beating amidst the loud sounds of a harsh but sheltered world full of "usual suspects". Gary, who puts the story of retired prostitute Rosa, who survived the Holocaust, and immigrant Momo, homelessness, intergenerational gap and war traumas at the center of his fiction, creates a novel that is as sensational as it is shocking.
Romain Gary, the playful name of French literature, who practiced his writing behind different voices and personas throughout his life, after being deemed worthy of the Goncourt Literary Prize, which is famous for the strictness of its legislation as well as the international fame it brought to its owner, with The Roots of Heaven , this time, Émile, after being criticized that he had lost his originality and creativity. He won the same award for the second time with While There Was All Poverty, which he wrote under the pseudonym Ajar, and left his mark on the history of literature by astonishing the jury, critics and readers with this play, the mystery of which was only solved years later, after his suicide.
This work, published by Sel Publishing and written by Romain Gary / Émile Ajar, is now on Books in the World.