NARRATIVE NON-FICTION | MEMOIR (Inculte) As the terrorist attacks are wreaking carnage just a few hundred metres away from his apartment in Paris, Jean-Michel Espitallier is living through his own tragedy. His partner Marina has died, ‘murdered’ by cancer. This book is the chronicle of a death that records the slow and calm approach of […]
FICTION (Gaia) In 1910, a journalist heads off to Latin America for the inauguration of an opera house and is taken captive by the Aztecs, who are mixed up with the Mexican revolution and arms trafficking. Disgusted by the grilled grasshoppers and stuffed iguanas he is served, he survives on a drink made from sugar, […]
FICTION (Le Rouergue) Boris’s wife died in New York on 11 September 2001. In a spirit of vengeance, he went to fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan, but now lives in Bordeaux and has become a private investigator. One night he intervenes to stop a homophobic attack during which a man loses his life – […]
FICTION (Le Rouergue) What was the nature of the feelings which bound Helen to Frank throughout her life? The children of diplomats, they met in Rome when they were twelve in the early 1950s. Although they were teenage lovers, they were never an ‘official couple’. We follow Frank and Helen to Amsterdam, Boston and Normandy […]
FICTION | FEEL GOOD (Le Rouergue) The first names of the two heroines in Marie-Sabine Roger’s novel are misleading, to say the least. 76-year-old Fleur is an obese woman who suffers from social phobia, meaning that she only ever goes out to see Doctor Borodine. And 26-year-old Harmonie has Tourette’s syndrome, meaning that she uses […]
LITERARY FICTION | NATURE WRITING “[A] lyrically wrought tale of discovery, exploration, and renewal… In this debut novel, acclaimed nature-writer Pyle (Mariposa Road, 2010) brings a lush sense of the majesty, mystique, and magic to be found in all of nature’s forms.”—Booklist “An elegant, eccentric novel of love, loneliness, and lepidoptera… Worthy company for work by other naturalist/novelists: […]
ESSAY | NARRATIVE NON-FICTION In April and May 1988, a hostage-taking incident at Ouvéa cave in New Caledonia prompted a military intervention and resulted in 21 deaths, 19 of whom were Kanaks. One of the victims was the 28-year-old Alphonse Dianou, a musician who had studied at the seminary to become a priest, was an […]
LITERARY FICTION A journalism student from the white upper middle classes in Port-au-Prince experiences a culture shock when she looks into the story of a man nicknamed Captain and discovers a decaying district full of ghosts that was previously a bastion of political struggle. In the process, her life is transformed as she finds common […]
LITERARY FICTION One warm evening in June, the 38-year-old Antonia takes a walk around the port of Calvi. The professionally frustrated photographer bumps into a group of legionnaires and immediately recognises one of them as Dragan, whom she had met during the war in the former Yugoslavia. They spend virtually the whole night catching up […]
LITERARY FICTION One morning the beautiful Ichrak is found murdered in a street in Casablanca. All the men feared her as much as they desired her… In a city buffeted by the Chergui, a violent wind emanating from the Sahara, the investigation, which is narrated by a young Congolese man who has recently arrived in […]