From the chameleon to the metic Masks and resurgence of the figure of the foreigner in Gary

Promise at dawn celebrates the assimilation of the young foreigner of goodwill who arrived in France at the age of 14 and became a French hero, a diplomat and a writer who, like the chameleon, has adapted. But behind this almost too beautiful story, the continuation of the work of Romain Gary makes reappear a more complex, harsher story, in which the figure of the young “métèque” of the 1930s returns, with its history of racism, in particular under the mask of Ajar, in La Vie devant soi, as the character of Momo.