In “Malville” by Emmanuel Ruben, those confined to the atom – Libération

In “Malville”, set in 2036, after the explosion of a nuclear power plant reactor, a man remembers his childhood and adolescence.

Several stories are intertwined in Malvillethe beautiful novel by Emmanuel Ruben. It is at once an anti-nuclear charge, a coming-of-age novel, an ode to the river and its wild banks, and finally a magnificent love story. As in most of the Books by this geography graduate, we find there the passion for landscapes and rivers which cut through the territory like so many veins carrying blood and oxygen. “For the first time in my life I felt geographical ecstasy. The river smelled of summer. It carried heavy vapors, flows of moist and heady freshness – exciting like a woman's mane.experiments on the banks of the Rhône and its tributaries the hero of Ruben, his double, the famous Samuel Vidouble who already carried his two previous novels, Sabre (Stock, 2020) et the Mediterranean women (Stock, 2022). “Geographical ecstasy”an expression that is dear to him and which he spoke to us about in 2018 in a long interview on the banks of the Loire, in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil, in the