A Partisan's Daughter Character Analysis

Chris is dull and completely unsure of himself. In his rare moment of courage he heads for a dodgy area of London to find a prostitute. At the same time, Roza, a bored Yugoslavian illegal immigrant, decides to get dressed “cheap” and lurk in the streets for fun. He thinks he is in love with Roza, but makes no move towards her, other than to visit and to listen to her stories. She is intelligent, top of her class, but left University after one year when she was dumped by her boyfriend. She ran away to England hoping for a different life. They form the central characters of the novel, A Partisan’s Daughter, by Louis de Bernières. Here, I am attempting a reading of the novel in the light of Steph Lawler’s essay “Stories and the Social World”. A Partisan’s Daughter is an apt study of stories, storytelling and the place of stories in the social world. De Bernières, here weaves a story of loneliness and of storytelling itself, which the characters seem to engage themselves in, to surpass their lonely existence. Narration …show more content…
The short novel takes us through the mindscape of two people. Chris, a man who is kindly but dull, afraid of adventure and hardship, without passion, and completely unsure of himself. In his rare moment of courage he heads for a dodgy area of London to find a prostitute, just to say he's seen one. At the same time, Roza, a bored Yugoslavian illegal immigrant, decides to get dressed "cheap" and lurk in the streets for fun. He thinks he is in love with Roza, but makes no move towards her, other than to visit and to listen to her stories. She is intelligent, top of her class, but left University after one year because she was dumped by her boyfriend. She ran away to England hoping for a different life. The novel opens with their protestations to not know their own motives and becomes a provocation by the