In His Flesh
Original title: Dans sa chair
Synopsis
Yasmine Chami explores the vertigo of a man confronted with his romantic realities and the twists and turns in which they have led him. Through this rereading of the myth of Medea and Jason, Yasmine Chami questions the construction and flaws of masculinity. — LIVRES HEBDO LE MAGAZINE
A text of poetry and rare accuracy, in sublime language, to tell the unbreakable bonds of a clan, the courage of women and the difficult encounter with oneself at the time of the balance sheets. — PSYCHOLOGIE MAGAZINE
(…) Yasmine Chami invites us to follow her in a story: that of a multicultural destiny and animated by a literary flame. His work reflects his sensitivity, subtle and elegant. (…). Her tenderness for humans led her to formulate a lucid equation where feminine and masculine would finally rebuild themselves. Together. — AFRIQUE MAGAZINE
The novelist auscultates the torments of desire in a man caught between a dying love and a passion that seems to have to swallow him up. (…). You will penetrate into the thoughts of this man who devotes his life to repairing the minds of those he operates on, will explore the traumas of his childhood, (…), to perhaps discover the sources of his vulnerability. You will quickly be fascinated by the story of this man tormented by doubt as well as by the way in which Yasmine Chami approaches desire, sexuality, the unpredictable impulses of life. — FEMITUDE
This is the story of a man who leaves. A priced man in the turmoil of desire and passion. A man who also discovers his weaknesses, while his wife seems to find a new balance. More broadly, this novel intelligently questions the issues of desire and freedom. – LA VOIX DU NORD
A powerful novel about loyalty, the stakes of desire and the construction of a man. — VERSION FEMINA
A great discovery — RADIO NOTRE-DAME
In His Flesh explores what in the life of a man capable of great love can generate such great cowardice. An intimate and very real story. And a study on men and on what their mother and their environment bequeath to them or impose on them. Original and constitutive flaws of their personality that pushes them to accomplish the unthinkable. — LE COURRIER DE L’ATLAS
The novel is a very fine analysis of the devastation that a separation creates. Ishmael was apparently in a position of strength: he was leaving Medea for another woman. This decision turned out to be dizzying. – ELLE
Writing is an abseiling descent into bodies as much as into the societies from which they come. Yasmine Chami, writer and anthropologist […], sees the act of storytelling no differently. Here she is back on the job in her fourth novel, the mystery of man. […] This is the story of a damned man getting lost in his certainties and the outdated learnings of his past. Better than a great book it is a true book. — LE PARISIEN WEEK-END, AUJOURD’HUI EN FRANCE
After Médée darling, the novelist returns with In her flesh, still published by Actes Sud. She thus signs the second part of a diptych which, by using a powerful mythological register, plunges us into the depths of the human condition. — REVUE TEL QUEL
This text explores the truth of being […], and more broadly questions the issues of desire and freedom. — LE QUOTIDIEN DU MÉDECIN
From a cliché – a fifty-year-old leaves his wife for a younger one – Yasmine Chami draws an impressive exploration of the human spirit, without ever directly answering the why? – LA VIE
This book explores what in the life of a man capable of great love can generate such cowardice. — MEMENTO
A highly respected surgeon abandons his wife at an airport, disappearing during a stopover while they are en route to Sydney. The woman is devastated, but the art of sculpture will offer her a road to recovery. An exploration of how a man capable of great love can be guilty of such cowardice, this wonderful novel is about men more generally and the influence that their mothers and their backgrounds bequeath, or impose on, them – those impressions and original fault lines that run much deeper than the desires that are a constant throughout their lives.
What can have occurred in Ismaïl’s head and heart for him to have abandoned his wife after thirty years of unconditional love? How could this artist called Médée, whom he so admired for her talent and beauty, have suddenly become a figure of the rather distant past for him, to the extent that he has no qualms about his cowardice and feels no stirrings of regret or guilt? How could this emeritus surgeon, so conscious of the suffering of others, have so brutally betrayed the trust of his adult children and their shared memories?
How can somebody be so unpredictable to their nearest and dearest?
This novel explores how desire and sexuality shapes our self-knowledge and the essence of who we are, questioning the truth of our being and looking at how we confront loss. It recounts a turning point in a man’s life as he enters his sixties with an almost intact lust for life that asserts itself uncompromisingly, uprooting in the process what he has built up until then.
More generally, it examines the vulnerability of men in contemporary society and how desire interacts with freedom.