Several big names in French literature are back in bookstores in September. From news items to historical correspondence, including emancipation novels, franceinfo:culture has selected the most anticipated books of the 2023 edition for you.
Livres Hebdo announced it in June: the 2023 literary season promises to be the least prolific of the century, with “only” 466 novels, compared to 490 last year, and 521 in 2021. But quantity does not equal quality. Supporting evidence: the big names in contemporary French literature are back in bookstores. Franceinfo:culture invites you to discover seven of the most anticipated novels.
Sorj Chalandon, “The Enraged” (Grasset)
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Sorj Chalandon is still a journalist at Release when he heard about this episode in 1977. On the night of August 27 to 28, 1934, fifty-six children from the penal colony for minors at Belle-Île-en-Mer (Morbihan) revolted and went into hiding. Soon, they find themselves blocked by the sea, unable to escape. The gendarmes chase them and offer the inhabitants to take part in the hunt. For each child captured, a twenty-franc piece is offered. Every corner of the island is searched, returned to find the trace of the fugitives and pocket the reward. In the early morning, fifty-five prisoners are brought back to the sinister supervised education center. What about the only fugitive still at large?
It is his story that the author, who won the Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française for Back to Killybegs (2011), recounts in his new novel the enraged. Sorj Chalandon paints the portrait of a beaten child, “the metamorphosis of a beast born without love, forced to unclench his fists to grasp the outstretched hands”. The winner of the Albert Londres Prize (1988) had a painful childhood himself, from which he drew a shocking previous book, Fathers profession (2016).
the enragedSorj Chalandon, Grasset editions, 22.50 euros, released August 17, 2023
Laurent Binet, “Perspective(s)” (Grasset)
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For its return to bookstores, two years after the astonishing Civilizations (2019), Laurent Binet tried his hand at historical epistolary thrillers with Prospect(s). In 1557 in Florence, the painter Pontormo was found murdered at the foot of the frescoes on which he had been working for eleven years. The handyman of the Duke of Florence, the painter Giorgio Vasari is responsible for leading the investigation. To assist him in his quest, he turned to the master Michelangelo, exiled in Rome. In Europe, political tensions are brewing: Cosimo de Medici must face the greed of his cousin Catherine, Queen of France, allied with his old enemy, the Republican Piero Strozzi. The city’s convents swarm with people nostalgic for Savonarola, while in Rome the pope condemns nudity in the Sistine Chapel.
Through a whole gallery of painters, sculptors, architects and political strategists, Laurent Binet takes the reader on an investigation where everyone is a suspect. Accustomed to historical frescoes, the former associate professor of French struck a blow in 2010, with HHhHGoncourt prize for the first novel sold nearly 200,000 copies according to Livres hebdo.
Prospect(s)Laurent Binet, Grasset editions, 21.50 euros, released on August 16, 2023
Éric Reinhardt, “Sarah, Suzanne and the writer” (Gallimard)
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The year 2023 will have been prolific for Eric Reinhardt. In the spring, the adaptation of its Renaudot prize Love and Forests (2014), directed by Valérie Donzelli, was presented out of competition in the Cannes Première selection at the film festival. In August, he signs a ninth novel, Sarah, Suzanne and the writer.
At the end of her life, Sarah decides to entrust her life to a writer she admires, so that he draws a novel from it. A way for Eric Reinhardt to refocus on the relationship between an author and his readers. Under the pen of her favorite novelist, Sarah becomes Suzanne, a woman abandoned by her husband. To make him react, she decides to leave their home for a while. A decision of course with unpredictable and overwhelming consequences.
Sarah, Suzanne and the writerEric Reinhardt, Gallimard editions, 22 euros, released on August 17, 2023.
François Bégaudeau, “Love” (Verticals)
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In his new novel, François Bégaudeau bets on “telling love as it is experienced most of the time by most people: without crisis or event. According to the life that passes, the springs that come and go.” The writer immerses his readers in the intimate life of the Moreaus, a strong couple of fifty years spent side by side. “Only death will separate them, and still that is not certain.”
Acclaimed for her third novel Between the walls (2006), inspired by his years of teaching in ZEP at the Mozart College in Paris, François Bégaudeau has become in twenty years a key figure on the French literary scene. Known for his very left-wing political positions, he describes himself as a Marxist. Essayist, playwright, scriptwriter for comics and cinema… At 52, the writer has already tried his hand at a thousand lives.
loveFrançois Bégaudeau, Verticales editions, 14.50 euros, released on August 17, 2023.
Maria Pourchet, “Western” (Stock)
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“By western I mean a place in life where you will bet your life on a decision. We are there, right on the edge of the western”. In her new text, Maria Pourchet leads the reader in Aurore’s footsteps. A busy single mother in Paris between parent-school meetings, her job and her lover. But this balance is not destined to last: one fine day she breaks down and flees the capital to find refuge in the mother’s house in the South-West. At the other end of France, Alexis Zagner is “the mouth of the century”. Recognized for his talents as an actor, he must soon embody Dom Juan in a new staging. His destructive passion for a very young premiere is on everyone’s lips. It then disappears overnight. As the press seizes on the affair, the path of the two vagabonds crosses…
Maria Pourchet is a novelist, author of Fire (2021), All the women except one (2018). Western is his seventh novel.
WesternMaria Pourchet, Stock editions, 20.90 euros, released on August 23, 2023.
Sarah Chiche, “Alchemy” (Seuil)
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His latest novel, Saturn (2020) wowed critics. In 2023, Sarah Chiche returns to the literary scene with the very current The alchemies. Camille Cambon, a brilliant medical examiner, receives an enigmatic email in the midst of a hospital crisis. Its mysterious correspondent evokes the painter Goya, official portraitist of the court of Spain. When his body was buried in Bordeaux in 1828, his skull was mysteriously stolen and disappeared into the wild. Before becoming internationally renowned scientists, Camille’s parents and her godfather, a neurologist, were passionate about the painter’s work.
Intrigued, the young woman leaves to meet her strange correspondent in Bordeaux. This former theater director knew well his relatives, then medical students, in the 1960s, and seems to know all about their shared obsession with Goya.
The alchemiesSarah Chiche, Seuil editions, 19.50 euros, released on August 18, 2023.
Agnès Desarthe, “The Castle of Rentiers” (L’Olivier)
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Fifteenth novel by the writer, The Castle of the Annuitants begins at the bottom of a tower in the 13th arrondissement of Paris. Looking up to the eighth floor of the building, Agnès remembers the life of her grandparents, Boris and Tsila Jampolski, and all those who once lived in the same building. It is here, rue du Château des Rentiers that the couple, Jews from Central Europe, created a phalanstery, a place of community life. Throughout the pages, eras overlap: the boundaries between past and present become blurred.the utopia of Boris and Tsila becomes that of Agnès.
Agnès Desarthe takes the reader on a humorous journey through the generations. Awarded the World Literary Prize in 2015 (This changing heart) and the Renaudot for high school students in 2010 (In the dark night), the author has also written more than thirty books for young people.
The Castle of the AnnuitantsAgnès Desarthe, L’Olivier editions, 19.50 euros, released on August 18, 2023.