“Day of surf” (Vertical editions) presents itself as a thriller. A corpse is found on a dike with the narrator’s phone number in its pocket. But quickly, we realize that the city where the action takes place appears as a character in its own right. This city is that of Le Havre, where Maylis de Kerangal lived her youth. “I really wanted to work on a city, and having this experience in Le Havre, I found a lot of interest in writing this book”, explains the author. “In Upper Normandy, the towns are different. For me, Rouen looked back to the knowledge of the past, whereas at that moment, my present was in Le Havre.” The port city, completely destroyed in September 1944 by the bombings of the English allies, then rebuilt just after the war under the leadership of Auguste Perret and his reinforced concrete in fact offers an opportunity for reflection that collides contemporary events.
From the resonance of bombs
“When do we talk about urbicide?” asks Maylis de Kerangal, clearly positioning herself as an author well within her time. And for good reason: “While writing this book, I felt the vibrations of the bombings of Kharkiv and Mariupol, then of Gaza from October 7, 2023.” Writing would therefore allow us to grasp this. How are cities destroyed? (essentially in two days for Le Havre in 1944, causing 2,000 victims). And then how are cities rebuilt? (In Le Havre, on the rubble of the destroyed city and sometimes even the bodies of its inhabitants, raising the current city by more than five feet!) So good that beneath the city exists the city before. Therefore, the title “Surt Day” takes on another dimension. “In any case, it’s the city that made me a writer.” Once again, literature allows us to bring distant events closer by connecting them to our daily lives, and ultimately always in this same quest for self…
