“I am a moderation extremist”

Fiction has never left me. She helped me survive when I went through dark times

Marc Dugain

Dugain drops everything, to the amazement of his American colleagues in the face of this Frenchy stroke of madness. The loser took up his pen and published, in 1998, “The Officers’ Room”. The transposed story of his grandfather, a handsome soldier who returned broken-faced from the war of 1914-1918. With, he believes, a variation, since he imagines that his beloved, frightened by his destroyed face, would have abandoned him, and that he would marry another. Her grandmother is enthusiastic about her writing but unsettled… “How did you know that? » she says to him. Faced with his incomprehension, she confesses the family secret to him: “You invented reality, that's exactly what happened to your grandfather…” Enough to comfort him in his radical change of direction.

A mystery remains: how young Marc, who at the age of 16 had launched into a frenzied correspondence with his friend and soul mate Fred Vargas, was able to become one of the actors of these money-making years that he never stopped castigate? At the time, he steadfastly assured her that he would write a “theory of revolution”, inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. “It’s very interesting, the circuitous paths,” comments Dugain. We were both very complex personalities, with too many scores to settle with our childhood… Fred, even if she went through the CNRS, started writing earlier than me. However, fiction has never left me. She helped me survive when I went through dark times. »

On the Kennedy assassination, I am 99.99% sure of my thesis

Marc Dugain

Throughout his novels, the author has made it his duty to take us behind the scenes of state secrets from France to Russia, via America. Because what Dugain cannot stand is that a power asks its citizens – like his grandfather – to believe in shameless lies. “So I, too, arrogate to myself the right to make fiction that goes in my direction! »

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And too bad for those who imagine him as a paper conspiracy theorist. “On the contrary, I am an extremist of moderation. I believe in doubt and its virtue. Even when I am convinced of something, I say: “It seems to me that…” On the Kennedy assassination, I am 99.99% sure of my thesis. But if one day someone can convince me that Oswald was a “lone killer,” I will admit it. Because the truth is so hard to reach. »

I assure you, I have never worked for either the DGSI or the DGSE

Marc Dugain

However, we know that to nourish his fictions the man relies on a network of ultra-well-informed agents. To the point of being regularly approached by strange Russian readers who “love” his novels… while the author of “An Ordinary Execution” is obviously not translated in Putin’s country. He is even considered a mole there.

Would Dugain actually be a secret agent? A hypothesis that delights him. “It would be wonderful if I revealed in my last book that my status as a writer was only a cover, and that my books were written by the services of… literary action! he said laughing. The affairs in which I am interested mean that I am very often on the fringes of both worlds. But, I assure you, I never worked for either the DGSI or the DGSE. And that’s true! » Words of a patent liar… which a novelist full of imagination necessarily is.