Chien 51 by Laurent Gaudé, released in large format two years ago, is reissued in paperback by Babel Actes Sud. Laurent Gaudé, Goncourt Prize 2004 for The Sun of the Scortas, offers us a dystopia.
This time, the author takes us to a megacity managed by a multinational which, like others, buys up ruined states. In this world, two cops will lead an investigation into two dead people, found horribly mutilated, in a poor district of the megalopolis. False lead. Police war, political manipulation. Laurent Gaudé leads all of this masterfully. The subtle writing and humanism of Laurent Gaudé have a lot to do with it.
Another dystopia or not far from the genre, In the forest by Jean Hegland, at Totem, the Gallmeister pocket collection. The story of two teenage girls who live in their family home, in the heart of a forest. Civilization is collapsing. They find themselves alone, facing the unknown. We will have to learn to grow differently and to fight. A world bestseller of great finesse.
Starting with Free Queens by Marie Ledun at Folio. Free Queens, released in large format a year and a half ago, tells us how, upset by the testimony of a Nigerian prostitute, a French journalist goes to Lagos to investigate. There, she discovers that a beer manufacturer is selling women’s bodies to better sell his marine products. With this novel, Marie Ledun echoes the beer war which has really been raging in Nigeria for ten years. A merciless trade war, in which the world’s largest brewers are engaged.
Another remarkable release in the pocket, No one dies in Longyearbyen by Morgan Audic. A fascinating thriller for the discovery it offers us of the Svalbard archipelago, a territory in the far north of Norway. And fascinating for the issues addressed, notably the use by the military of Beluga whales for spying. The novel won the readers’ prize this year at the Quai du Polar festival in Lyon.
Also to remember in the fall outings, Oligarch by Elena B. Morozov published by Livre de Poche. Oligarch is intended to be a composite portrait, that of a Russian oligarch as he really exists today. A little Abramovich, a little Kodhorkovsky, a little Berezovsky, and others. In this pure fiction novel, we follow the rise of a brilliant, cynical young orphan from decomposing Soviet Russia to the highest echelons of uninhibited international finance. Half a century of life which accompanies the fall of an old world, the USSR, and the birth of a new world, the ruthless and cruel world of Russia, of Yeltsin, and then of Putin.
