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ere are some of the events that are not described in Claire Messud’s ambitious novel about the lives of three generations of a Franco-Algerian family: the Algerian war of independence, as a result of which the Cassar family lose their home and national identity; the two years the family’s most promising scion spends as a student in Paris, during which he endures something (racist bullying? Mental collapse?) that blights his adult life; his sister’s broken-hearted suicide