THE MORNING LIST
This week, “Le Monde des livres” recommends reading the first novel by Arnaud Guigue, which revives the figure of Abe Sada, murderer of his lover, in Tokyo, in 1936; a sociological survey among retired union workers from the Peugeot factory in Sochaux; the adventure of an artificial consciousness emerging on the Moon with the new novel by Catherine Dufour; a portrait of the Argentine writer and editor Silvina Ocampo (1903-1993) by one of her admirers, another Argentine writer, Mariana Enriquez; a story by Lucie Taïeb on the sites of former lignite mines, in Germany, and in her memories.
NOVEL. “I am the one you are looking for”, by Arnaud Guigue
This policeman wasn't asking for that much; he was checking the identity of customers at an inn when a young woman announced to him: “I am Abe Sada, the one you are looking for. » On May 20, 1936, it had been three days since she had been hunted across Tokyo, after the discovery of the corpse of her lover, dead of strangulation, his genitals severed, his thigh covered with letters of blood: “Sada, Kichi, together forever.” » Abe Sada, who had planned to commit suicide, explained that after weeks of love of incredible sexual intensity (which Nagisa Oshima would magnify in The Empire of the Sensesin 1976), she saw no other outcome than death.
The story of Abe Sada's three days of wandering through the city follows the interrogation of the latter by the police, during which she retraces her trajectory, from her childhood to her affair with Kichizo Ishida, including a rape suffered as a teenager, then through her years in a geisha house, before becoming a prostitute. Then comes the evocation of her trial, of life in prison, and in a world where her story continues to catch up with her.
In each part of the novel, Arnaud Guigue makes sure to add to the story of the facts the view of strangers, scandalized, forbidden or fascinated, on this woman and on her actions which remain irreducible to explanations. The simplicity and transparency of the sentences do not claim to shed light on the opacity of the facts recounted in I am the one you are looking forbut on the contrary allow it to unfold. R. L.
SOCIOLOGY. “Until the end. Aging and resisting in the working world”, by Nicolas Renahy
Almost everything has been written about retirees, these supposed enjoyers of free time. However, one piece of data is often overlooked: three out of ten are former workers. Because, not so long ago, France was a highly industrialized country. The factories closed, the proletarians stayed. It is their lives that Nicolas Renahy is interested in in his new essay, proposing a sociology of working-class old age.
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