What if we examined human violence through the eyes of dogs? This is a bit what the Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte offers with his latest novel “Without law or master” published by Editions du Seuil. A kind of black novel whose characters are dogs.
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Arturo Perez-Reverte, accustomed to historical and detective novels, gives us this time in Without law or master a kind of fable where imaginary lives of dogs offer us a tool to examine human lives. Pérez-Reverte tells us about the lives of dogs left to their own devices, a bit like street urchins in the slums of large cities undermined by misery and violence. At the level of dogs, we are entitled to their vision of the world, to their comments on the human species and their behavior.
It is obviously not a manual of ethology but the anthropomorphism of Pérez-Reverte hits the mark and the imagination of the Spanish writer is limitless with one objective: to denounce the violence of men. And rarely has an author talked about animals with so much talent and precision. This is in any case a perfect book for all those who are accompanied by their pet during their vacation.
Much more serious in this period when many cetaceans are discovered stranded on beaches or in the Seine far from the sea, like the beluga whose rescue attempt ended in the death of the animal last week. The Praise of the Whale by Camille Brunel, at Payot-Rivages, is once again a militant anti-speciesist book. A work started since his first novel since Animal Guerrilla. Camille Brunel makes us discover the life, the personality of cetaceans. And inevitably we come out of this reading strongly shaken in our certainties.