Deux fables politiques en écho ? Le Colonel Chabert et Le Fleuve détourné

In spite of a wide discrepancy in time and space, Mimouni’s Le Fleuve détourné conjures up a literary reminiscence, which is Balzac’s Colonel Chabert. Each hero, a new Odysseus who has returned home after years of travels, has the greatest difficulty getting his rights back while observing at the same time the present state of society, in dismay. How do those two political fables differ on the narrative level, on the balance between realism and fantasy and on historical commitment?