Piece of dirt

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Dreckstück (original title: La Pouilleuse ) is a youth novel by the French writer Clémentine Beauvais . It tells the story of a group of young people who kidnap a dark-skinned, six-year-old girl and torture them verbally and physically. The novel covers topics such as racism , violence, and youthful piping.

Bitch appeared in 2012 at Éditions Sarbance in French language and 2015 when Carlsen Verlag in German translation. The book was translated into German by Annette von der Weppen and is recommended by the publisher for young people aged 14 and over.

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The protagonist and first-person narrator David and part of his clique - Florian, Gonzague, Anne-Laure and Élise - are once again not in the mood for school and skip. Unlike usual, Marguerite is not there that day. On the way to Gonzague's apartment, covered with dishes from the Chinese, they meet a dark-skinned little girl. The youngsters discover lice in their hair and decide to take them with them and delousing them. Florian pulls the six-year-old behind him by the scarf. The girl allows the young people to take her into the apartment without any resistance. It doesn't stop with delousing, the young people let out their pent-up anger on the child. The five youths never end and torture the girl without scruples. She has to eat her own lice with vinegar-soaked rice, her hair is shaved. She constantly has to listen to racist insults from the boys and is not allowed to make a sound. David repeatedly shows that he has concerns and actually doesn't want to participate, but still doesn't dare to intervene in the cruel events.

When the gang hears the girl's missing person report on the radio and then sees the police in front of the house, David becomes even more nervous. He wants to find out with Élise whether the neighbors might have heard of the terrible event. They ring an older couple's doorbell, the almost blind man confuses the two of them with the carers for his wife and invites them in. From then on, David and Élise pretend to be caregivers and only hear the tortures through the ceiling.

When they return to Gonzague's apartment, the girl is gone. The other three don't want to reveal where she is, instead they insist on going back to school so as not to miss the last lesson. You have to take the stairs as the elevator is supposedly broken, according to Gonzague. On the way there they meet the police. One of the policewomen asks them why they are not in school, which school they would go to and which subjects were on the timetable today. First, Élise begins to scratch her head and body. The others quickly follow suit. Anne-Laure already has bloody nails, Florian is tearing his hair out and Gonzague is rocking back and forth obsessively. The police suspect that the youth are drugged. At the police station, after the negative drug test, the news arrives: a bald-shaven girl found in the elevator.

In the interrogations, the young people do not know the answer to the question “Why?”. In the courtroom, part of the clique tries in vain to justify the death of their friend Mathieu. They explain themselves with the frustration over the almost accident in the morning and the failure of Florian's brother to pass the entrance exam. The actual “why” remains open.

Literary criticism

Dreckstück received an overall positive response from the press. DIE ZEIT praised “A book that touches humanity, empathy and charity in every reader.” The Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes “More than other youth novels on the subject,“ Dreckstück ”arouses the need to exchange ideas: about violence and racism - and about it, what it means to act in a group. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ bitch , carlsen.de, accessed on July 5, 2019
  2. ↑ Cruel chamber play. DIE ZEIT, November 19, 2015, accessed on June 27, 2019.
  3. ↑ Why is there violence? Neue Zürcher Zeitung, January 6, 2016, accessed on June 27, 2019.