Eight novels, a collection of feminist essays, a literary study… Here are brief reviews of ten notable works from the literary rentrée in this thirty-fifth week of the year.
Novel. “The King’s Harem,” by Djaïli Amadou Amal
After The Impatients et Heart of the Sahel (ed. Emmanuelle Collas, 2020 and 2022), Djaïli Amadou Amal continues to probe the Fulani soul in The King’s Harem.Always, the Cameroonian woman starts from the broken destiny of a woman to confront the traditions of her people of origin with modernity. From this comes the mixture of militancy, romance and pedagogy which makes her success. In The King’s Haremher heroine, Boussoura, a literature professor, has been married for a long time to her husband, Seini, a doctor, when he takes up the position of lamidoa traditional chief. Boussoura must accept the presence of concubines and slaves – the latter are said to have desired this status. Should Boussoura and Seini reject custom or change things from within? This tragic dilemma, carried by a fluid writing style, makes this new novel a fascinating read. Gl. Ma.
“The King’s Harem,” by Djaïli Amadou Amal, published by Emmanuelle Collas, 288 p., €21.90, digital €15.
Novel. “Reflections of Chance” by Hélios Azoulay
The plot is simple: a man wins the lottery and refuses the money because he didn’t have “ just don’t want to be someone in the middle of all this [qu’il se serait] bought “. The language itself is chiseled and full of surprises. In Reflections of chanceHélios Azoulay plays with typography, the spaces between words and lines. The aesthetics evoke that of automatic writing, which plays with the vagaries of our unconscious. Here, he also plays with the vagaries of the lottery, the vagaries of madness: the narrator ends up in a psychiatric hospital without us really knowing how, and devotes himself there to an epistolary exchange with a stranger. Hélios Azoulay, accustomed to the performing arts as a musician, composer and actor, seeks to disturb his reader. He warns him: “I know as well as you that time does not go back, I know what I am stealing from you.” But he tells us “repay” with its beautiful poetic or cynical passages, the contrast of which never ceases to entertain us. Si. Bl.
“Reflections of Chance”, by Hélios Azoulay, Le Rocher, 160 p., €15.90, digital €12.
Feminism. “Equality without return”, by Geneviève Fraisse
Throughout her work, philosopher Geneviève Fraisse, emeritus research director at the CNRS, has scrutinized the evolution of discourses about women, bringing to light from the archives issues that are still current. By analyzing countless texts published before or after the French Revolution, she has shown to what extent the end of the Ancien Régime and the proclamation of political equality left unresolved the questions of the end of patriarchy and women’s freedom. In this collection, which brings together seven studies and prefaces published in recent years, she follows the analysis of the tensions, ruptures and ambiguities that marked women’s long march toward what she calls a “equality without return”.
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