Lola Lafon (The Little Communist Who Never Smiled, Capsize, When you listen to this song…) publishes It was never too late (Stock), Pascal Quignard (Goncourt for Wandering Shadows) present Hidden treasure (Albin Michel). Gérard Mordillat wrote the continuation of its great success: The Living and the Dead, twenty years later (Calmann-Lévy). Camille Laurens (Femina for In these arms, Girl…) sort Your promise (Gallimard) where she “questions contemporary narcissism, the absence of empathy, and wonders how to save love from its illusions.” In Nothing, still at Gallimard, the philosopher Régis Debray revives “certain incongruous memories, of those who take a strange journey, from four to eighty-four years old.” In Pentothal (Albin Michel), Eric Neuhoff recalls the car accident he experienced at the age of 22 and which cost the life of his best friend, Olivier. Thomas Reverdy (Interallié price for The Winter of Discontent) returns to an address where he lived for two years to sign 6 avenue George V at Flammarion.
Régis Debray: “Ecology fills the void left by the decline of religious stories”
Without forgetting the new work of Pierre Assouline (The Announcement – Gallimard), Everyone loves Clara (Gallimard) of David Foenkinos. Talking silhouette of Gérard Macé (Gallimard), Everyone passed without fear of Jean Rolin (POL), The fault of Blandine Rinkel (Stock), Towards the Scattered Islands d’Olivier Rolin (Values), sleepless night the self-portrait of Bernard-Henri Levy (Grasset), The Future of Stéphane Audeguy (Threshold), Tell you about my son of Philippe Besson (Julliard), Denis Podalydès The family friend – Memories of Pierre Bourdieu (Julliard), Every day, Suzanne of The Great Sophie (Phoebus), Marc Lavoine (When the horses arrive at Fayard). And many more…
The Belgians
On the Belgian side, note thatAdeline Dieudonné (Real Life, Kerosene…) et Arnold Hovart sign a children's book: A pet moose – Tips and tricks to get rid of it (Editions des Arènes). Second degree assured.
“What makes us mothers? Is it a biological experience? The mother is above all a social being”
Jeremy Claes had published an addictive first novel with The Watchmaker. He returns with a second book. THE Commander Solane (Héloïse d'Ormesson editions) will have to investigate the arrival of charred and mutilated bodies washed up on the beach of Cannes-La Bocca.
In Landscape without Véronique (Les Impressions Nouvelles), Pierre Mertens pays tribute to Véronique Pirotton “the one who was a close friend as well as an aspiring writer”.
Véronique Selswho published last year Portrait of Stéphane Mandelbaumoffers readers The book of possibilities (Genesis). A book discovered by a young woman under the head of a newborn baby whom she found on a train and decided to adopt.
Abroad ?
As for foreign literature, fans ofHaruki Murakami (The Ballad of the Impossible, 1Q84, Kafka on the shore…) wait The City of Uncertain Walls (Belfond). “The girl told her lover about the City. She told him that he could only go there if he wanted to know his true self. And then the girl disappeared. So the lover left looking for it in the City, like all the inhabitants, he lost his shadow. He became a dream reader in a library.
Haruki Murakami: “Literature alone will not be enough
Among the Americans, Richard Powers (Pulitzer and Booker prize with The World Tree) comes back with An endless game (South Acts). It talks about the construction of floating cities, a Pacific atoll and artificial intelligence. Gallimard editions publish The Whole of Dave Eggers (Foreign Medici for The Big What). “The Whole” is the most powerful company in the world which owns all social networks. Young Delaney Wells wants to be hired there, to create the most horrible applications so that the world will revolt. Rachel Kushner (The lake of creation at Stock) also talks about activism. In Dordogne, a young female secret agent infiltrates a small environmental group with plans to commit violence. Pulitzer for The Decline of the Whiting Empire, Richard Russo sort Sully's will by Éditions de La Table Ronde, third part of his trilogy started with An almost perfect man et Smart, smart and a half. Without forgetting To those who know how to waitthe new detective novel by Michael Connelly at Calmann-Lévy or even Brian Turner My life is a foreign country (Phébus), the war memoirs of a former sergeant in the US army.
British writer, screenwriter and playwright Hanif Kureishifriend of Salman Rushdie, reveals Smashed (Bourgois). He talks about the accident and the fall that left him quadriplegic. For The Glutton (Globe), A. K. Blakemore was inspired by a real peasant during the French Revolution who today would handily win hot dog eating contests at Nathan's in Coney Island.
The Song of the Prophet of the Irish Paul Lyncha work which won him the Booker Prize, is translated into French by Albin Michel. French speakers will also be able to discover a bestseller, a real phenomenon in Italy. In this case, The Fragile Age of Donatella Di Pietrantonio (Albin Michel). On the transalpine side, again, Roberto Saviano (Gomorrah) paints the portrait of Giovanni Falcone (Gallimard), late enemy number 1 of the Sicilian mafia. The Chinese writer Liu Cixinauthor of Three-body problemsigne Dinosaurs and ants (South Acts).
Arnaldur Indridason, the Simenon of ice
The Israeli writer Orly Castel-Bloom publishes Biotope also at Actes Sud. She evokes in Tel Aviv the life of Joseph Shimel, “an almost brother of Kafka's Joseph, attentive witness and bewildered victim of our modernity”. The Jamaican novelist Marlon James (Booker Prize pour Brief History of Seven Murders) publishes The Moon Witch at Albin Michel. Finally, the master of Icelandic crime fiction, Arnaldur Indridason (The City of Jars, The Woman in Green…), presents The Tomorrows That Sing (Éditions Métailié). “A very dark novel” who we “reveals the existence of Russian spy networks in Iceland in the 1960s.”
