In “Les Petites Musiques”, Roland Buti portrays a free heroine in conservative Switzerland in the 1970s

Published on January 18, 2025 at 12:24 p.m. / Modified on January 18, 2025 at 1:19 p.m.

7 mins. reading

Six years later Grand National (Frontier Letters Prize), and twelve years later The Middle of the Horizon (Swiss Literature Prize, RTS Audience Prize, film adaptation by Delphine Lehericey), here is the new, anticipated novel by Roland Buti. Little Music takes place in Sainte-Croix, in the late 1960s, in a city that exports music boxes and Bolex cameras around the world. This exceptional industrial heritage is already increasingly competing with electronics. Several characters try to make their place in a rigid society: the immigrant couple formed by Masa and Rocca and their two children, Ivo and Jana.

Jana is the main heroine of this novel who knows how to combine great sensuality, an organic porosity and feelings, with a rigorous construction, worthy of cutting-edge mechanics. Jana agrees to let herself be “invaded” by the nature of the Jura, lies down on the anthills, walks naked in the forest, climbs trees, writes poems and lives her sexuality without hindrance. She disturbs the order of a society that is too well regulated, which ends up depriving her of her freedom.

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