Experiencing like many during the year 2020 this “time of confinement and suspense” which has become the norm, the French essayist and novelist Justine Augier (Renaudot essay prize in 2017 with ardor) wanted to question the powers of literature in the face of what encloses or crushes time, identities, language and possibilities. The one who worked for a long time in the humanitarian field made a story out of it, Believe. On the powers of literature, where she wonders if literature can change something in reality. Starting from her mourning after the death of her mother, who died of lightning leukemia in January 2021, she summons literature from the camps as well as figures from the Syrian opposition, recalling the need to fight against oblivion and to don’t “let ghosts get embalmed and cold”. Through her quest, nourished by her complex relationship with her mother, Justine Augier tells us in this luminous book that literature has the power, if we want to believe it, to create links between us, words and the dead. .
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