The Lost Ones
Ayana Mathis
A little over ten years ago, Ayana Mathis published The Twelve Tribes of Hattiea moving book that was crowned with success. Carried by a pen often compared to that of Toni Morrison, the fresco was ambitious, particularly because it covered, with the help of a vast gallery of characters, nearly a century of American history. Set in Philadelphia in 1985, her second novel is structured like the first around a mother fighting against poverty and violence. An African-American in her forties, a refugee in a filthy shelter that she dreams of leaving, Ava is ready to do anything to protect Toussaint, her 10-year-old son.
Gallmeister, in bookstores
One day in April
Michael Cunningham
Twenty-six years later The hoursa masterful book that won him a Pulitzer Prize, and ten years later Snow Queenhis most recent novel, Michael Cunningham finally releases its eighth opus. The action takes place in Brooklyn April 5, 2019, 2020 and 2021, in other words before, during and after the pandemic, with all that implies in terms of mourning and disillusionment. The story is based on a triangle of characters with intertwined destinies: Dan and Isabel, a couple losing their way, and Robbie, Isabel’s gay younger brother, who lives in the attic. The trio is observed with all the finesse and sensitivity of which the author is capable.
Threshold, September 21
Blackouts
Justin Torres
Entered the literary world in 2011 with Animal lifea story of rare authenticity and hard-hitting autofiction that rightly features on the recent list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.e century according to the New York Times, Justin Torres finally does it again. The novel, which is formally said to be very inventive, revolves around an encounter between the narrator, a 27-year-old man of Puerto Rican origin, and Juan Guay, a colorful character who lives in the middle of the desert in a queer community. The hero’s mission: to continue Juan’s research on a lesbian anthropologist whose avant-garde work has been hidden.
The Olive Tree, September 21
American Boys
Khashayar J. Khabushani
The first novel of Khashayar J. Khabushani takes place in the San Fernando Valley, California, where he was born in 1992. Its hero, or rather his alter ego, is called K. The youngest of the siblings, the boy knows that he is not quite like his two brothers. Their father lost his job when he left Iran for the United States. Their mother ended up abandoning home because of the violence she suffered on a daily basis. The day the father decides to take his sons to Tehran, K.’s American dream is shattered. When they return to Los Angeles a few months later, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, nothing is the same.
Denoël, October 2
Say Babylon
Safiya Sinclair
Born in 1984 in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Safiya Sinclair moved to the United States in 2006 to continue her studies. Her first novel, frankly autobiographical, earned her very positive reviews. The author revisits her childhood between a mother who loved literature and a reggae musician father who, in accordance with the precepts of Rastafarianism, rejects modernity, this horror that he does not hesitate to call “Babylon”. Without hiding the ravages caused by discrimination, precariousness and patriarchy, the book is a celebration, a tribute to the courage of women, a hymn to music and dance, to words and education.
Buchet-Chastel, October 2
A life full of meaning
Pablo Casacuberta
The Uruguayan’s new novel Pablo Casacuberta, the fourth to be published in French, focuses on a neurophysiologist who studies communication between synapses, the way in which cells must open to receive information and stay alive. One day, rather than attending the opening of a watercolor exhibition at his son’s school, the man leaves for Berlin to meet his publisher. When he returns, his wife files for divorce. To get out of the financial impasse in which he is plunged, the scientist must get down to writing… a personal development book!
Métailié, October 7
Aesthetica
Allie Rowbottom
After Jell-O Girlsan autobiographical story in which she skillfully links her destiny to that of her mother and grandmother, the American author Allie Rowbottom publishes a first novel, the main action of which takes place in Los Angeles in 2032. After being an Instagrammer, Anna now works at a cosmetics counter. In order to wipe the slate clean, the 35-year-old woman hopes to be entitled to a procedure that would erase the plastic surgeries she has received over the years and give her back her true face. A book about female empowerment and the industry of the male gaze.
Fayard, October 7
Julia
Sandra Newman
Covered with praise in the English-speaking world, the sixth novel by Sandra Newman, the first to have a French translation, is a feminist rereading of 1984George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, published 75 years ago. Still set in London under the yoke of an ultra-authoritarian regime led by Big Brother, the action is no longer observed from Winston Smith’s point of view. This time, we are treated to the version of Julia, a mechanic in the Fiction department of the Ministry of Truth, a citizen whose gaze reveals a totalitarian state, where the condition of women differs cruelly from that of men.
Robert Laffont, October 11
Bone black
bell hooks
American intellectual and activist, theorist of Afrofeminism, author of numerous essays, notably the luminous About love, where she imagines a romantic relationship freed from the patriarchal straitjacket, bell hooks left us in 2021. Coming out this fall, for the first time in French, is an autobiographical novel published in the United States in 1996. The author recounts her childhood, that of a little black girl growing up in the still segregated South of the 1950s. Among the multitude of themes addressed, let us mention loneliness and family violence, but also the richness of black culture and the specificity of feminine creativity.
Plon, October 11
The freedwoman
Claudia Cravens
The first novel by the American author Claudia Cravens is nothing less than a queer and feminist reappropriation of the western, a genre that usually mingles with misogyny, racism and colonialism. The year is 1870. A rebel, without parents, without money and without the slightest idea of what tomorrow will bring, Bridget crosses the plains to settle in Dodge City. She quickly gets hired at the Buffalo Queen, a brothel run by women, where the young heroine with flamboyant red hair will find friends, a kind of family, and even awaken to her own desire.
Stopovers, October 11