Darling Médée
Original title: Médée chérie
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NOVEL
A splendid text, written by the urgency to speak and can be read in one breath. — Blog LoupBouquin
This third novel celebrates the resilience and the ability to pull yourself out of despondency through art. Brilliant. — Catherine Faye, Afrique Magazine
With a stunning poetry and a deft pen, the writer Yasmine Chami, author of Mourir est un enchantement, explores the sorrow of an abandoned woman whose survival is hanging by a thread. — Héloïse Rocca, Version Femina
Using a dreamlike and lyrical language, she plunges us into her story (…). Proustian choice to explain a world from the perspective of its destruction. In this introspective journey imposed on her by pain, she tries to define herself…— Oriane Jeancourt, Transfuge
At an airport a woman is waiting for her husband, who has just popped off for a moment, to return. All of sudden she realises what is happening as the boarding gate is closed: Ismaël won’t be coming back. Médée stands silent and motionless, not wanting to leave the airlock where this violent fait accompli has left her stranded. She senses that she needs to stay on the scene of the crisis and allow her body to absorb the shock in the place where her world has been turned upside down. This is how Médée sets out to confront, absorb and pick apart her grief. She asks her son to find her a room in a hotel next to the airport. Then she orders him to leave and embarks on something akin to a metamorphosis. Only afterwards will Médée leave her room and set out, initially in the airport itself, on a new path in life. This book celebrates the power and strength of the female artist, her resilience and her capacity to extract from her depleted body the inspiration for art.
Yasmine Chami is an anthropologist who lives and works in Casablanca. Following on form Cérémonie (Actes Sud, 1999) and Mourir est un enchantement (Actes Sud, 2017), this is her third novel.