“When you listen to this song”, “La Vie clandestine”, “La Dissociation”… Our reading tips

THE MORNING LIST

At the start of the literary season, we invite you to discover six of the ten novels in the running for the literary prize The world : Attack the earth and the sunby Mathieu Belezi, The Clandestine Lifeby Monica Sabolo, The Dissociationby Nadia Yala Kisukidi, When you listen to this songby Lola Lafon, The hand on the heartby Yves Harté, and They will kill your sons, by Guillaume Perilhou. And, so that summer doesn’t end too quickly, an essay to dive into to cool off: The Great Sea. A History of the Mediterranean and the Mediterranean Peopleby David Abulafia.

NOVEL. “Attacking the Earth and the Sun”, by Mathieu Belezi

One day, generals pass on their high prancing horses, “ruddy cheeks, full bellies, freshly polished boots”, glorious speech – France, civilization, barbarism, gleaming balloons agitated above the mud, the barracks of boards, the dirt and the anguish. And then they leave, and the life of the settlers resumes.

Séraphine’s two boys died of cholera a few months earlier; she stays with her husband and daughter to plow the rockery. Further, the French soldiers massacre, rape, plunder, furrow Algeria in blood.

Fifteen years have passed since the French army landed in Algeria in 1830. Séraphine and her family, attracted by the promise of a new life, joined one of the many “agricultural settlements” which should ultimately make the French presence irreversible. No one, neither the authorities nor her husband, who was more gullible than she, could convince Séraphine that there was the slightest chance to gamble here. Promises will not be kept. She knows it.

Book in a motionless sense, trampling between the presentiment of failure and the multiple forms of its accomplishment, Attack the earth and the sun is electrified by a constant tension, like an irrational expectation of salvation, which does not come, except for those who leave, who finally give up. There is no other way out, there has never been another way out, seems to be saying Mathieu Belezi as he comes to the end of his long journey through Algeria – this is the fourth book he has dedicated to this country. –, which this great novel of the colonial illusion sums up with overwhelming power. Florent Georgesco

NOVEL. “The Clandestine Life”, by Monica Sabolo

The Clandestine Life is the book of a tightrope walker. It takes all the bold delicacy of Monica Sabolo to advance simultaneously on the two threads of her work. The one devoted to the history of the Direct Action group. And the one telling his own family history, haunted by silences, secrets and violence.

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