SUMMER 2012
Contacts: Lucinda Karter, Alice Tassel, Sophie Schiavo,
Samantha Steele
E-mail: [email protected]
853 BROADWAY, SUITE 1509, NEW YORK, NY 10003
Tel: 212-254-4540; fax: 212-979-6229
www.frenchpubagency.com
A Selection of Recent Sales
Romancero aux étoiles
Jacques Stephen Alexis
(Virginia UP/Gallimard)
La maison et ses génies
Claude Lecouteux
(Inner Traditions/Imago)
Groenland
Bernard Besson
(Le French Book/Odile Jacob)
Le livre des grimoires
Claude Lecouteux
(Inner Traditions/Imago)
Retour à Reims
Didier Eribon
(Semiotext(e)/Fayard)
Un jour avant Pâques
Zoya Pirzad
(Oneworld/Zulma)
Aux frontières du plâtre (extract)
Jean Ferry
(Coffin Factory/Finitude)
La disparition soudaine des ouvrières
Serge Quadruppani
(Arcade/JC Lattès)
Sur la mort d’un chien
Jean Grenier
(Turtle Point Press/Gallimard)
La femme au miroir
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
(Europa/Albin Michel)
Contes de la rue Broca
Pierre Gripani
(Pushkin Press/
Éditions de la Table Ronde)
Tu as changé ma vie
Abdel Sellou
(Weinstein/Michel Lafon)
Ma voie
Barbara Hendricks
(Chicago Review Press/Les Arènes)
Temps des crises
Michel Serres
(Continuum/Le Pommier)
Deux petits pas sur le sable mouillé
Anne-Dauphine Julliand
(Skyhorse/Les Arènes)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
BIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................................. 4
CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT ................................................................................................... 6
FICTION ......................................................................................................................................... 8
GRAPHIC NOVELS .................................................................................................................... 23
HISTORY ..................................................................................................................................... 24
PHILOSOPHY .............................................................................................................................. 26
RELIGION .................................................................................................................................... 29
SELF-HELP .................................................................................................................................. 30
SOCIOLOGY ............................................................................................................................... 32
INDEX OF TITLES AND AUTHORS ........................................................................................ 34
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BIOGRAPHY
Berthe Morisot: Le secret de la femme en noir/
Berthe Morisot: The Secret of the Woman in Black
Dominique Bona
(Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle, 351 pages, 2000)
***Winner of the Goncourt Prize for Biography 2000***
***Film by Isabelle Adjani currently in production***
***Author currently on Livres Hebdo best-seller list***
***Author has been translated into 13 languages***
***Translation sample available***
***Rights sold in Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Korea, and Russia***
With a rare precision of tone, paired with an impressive analytical finesse,
Dominique Bona pierces the mystery of the woman in black painted by Manet.
—Le Figaro
In this stunning and rigorously entertaining biography of muse and artist Berthe Morisot,
Dominique Bona paints a vibrant picture of a strong and complicated woman as well as the birth
of the Impressionist movement from a social milieu of deviants, bourgeois, and idealists. Morisot
was a lone woman amidst a boisterous group of male painters including Degas, Renoir, Monet,
and, most important to her, Edouard Manet. Morisot used her artistic talents to invent a freedom
for herself that didn’t yet exist for others of her sex.
This biography provides an intimate, detailed, and well-documented portrait of a dynamic and
compelling woman, while also being a snapshot of Parisian Belle Époque society. There is all the
gossip and intrigue that was present at the birth of an artistic movement born of chance
encounters and dinner party acquaintances. Berthe Morisot grew up in a social milieu of artists
and writers, including Émile Zola and Henri Fantin-Latour, and she continued to befriend the
luminaries of her time who pushed the boundaries of accepted art, seeking to capture the fleeting
glances and impressions of light and life.
Morisot was most taken with Edouard Manet, a charming and seductive man and an ambitious
and rebellious painter. The obsession was mutual, and the dark mystery of Morisot’s face would
inspire many of Manet’s portraits, including the famous Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of
Violets. For years the two discussed and critiqued each other’s work, although Morisot always
insisted on keeping her artistic identity separate from that of Manet. She would eventually marry
his brother, Eugène. Throughout her married life and motherhood, Morisot continued to foster
her work and to expose her art, never giving up her passion for the sake of domesticity.
In the same way an Impressionist painter captures not just the scenery but also the light, the air,
and the feeling of a place, so Dominique Bona reanimates history and brings to light the feelings,
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ambitions, and first impressions these historical figures had of each other and their art. Using
personal correspondence, Bona peels back the veil of history, revealing three-dimensional people
with all their most human desires and relatable flaws. The book is a fast-paced and captivating
look at the paintings and painters of the Belle Époque, but it is most of all the story of a woman.
Morisot, as Bona shows, equaled in talent the men she shared the stage with, and rose above the
challenges faced by a woman, and an artist, of the time.
Dominique Bona is a novelist and biographer. She is the author of Romain Gary (Mercure de
France, 1987), winner of the Grand Prix from the Académie Française in biography; Malika
(Mercure de France, 1992), winner of the Prix Interallié; Le manuscrit de Port-Ébène (Grasset,
1998), winner of the Prix Renaudot; Camille et Paul: La passion Claudel (Grasset, 2006); Clara
Malraux (Grasset, 2010); Stefan Zweig (Grasset, 2010); and most recently, Deux soeurs:
Yvonne et Christine Rouart, muses de l’impressionnisme (Grasset, 2012), among others. Her
works have been translated into more than a dozen languages. She started her career as a
journalist for France Culture and France Inter and has worked for Le Quotidien de Paris and Le
Figaro Littéraire as well.
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CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT
La guerre au nom de l’humanité: Tuer ou laisser mourir/
War in the Name of Humanity: To Kill or Let Die
Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer
(Presses Universitaires de France, 624 pages, 2012)
***Preface by Hubert Védrine, diplomatic adviser to President Mitterrand and former
Foreign Minister***
This book is without a doubt the most in-depth and the most elaborate work ever
published in French on the subject of war—and the most pertinent.
—Hubert Védrine
. . . for the clarity of its analyses and the relevance of its topics, here is an
important work that helps us understand the world going awry.
—LivresHebdo
Throughout history, military intervention has been justified on humanitarian grounds. Can it be?
Should it be? Vilmer provides a thorough review of a multifaceted debate, with examples
ranging from ancient China to today. His interdisciplinary and intercultural analysis is a
confluence of political science, philosophy, and history addressing the most burning questions in
international relations.
Inherent in the concept of military intervention is a range of complex questions for politicians
and common citizens. When is it appropriate and/or necessary to bomb a foreign nation in the
name of human rights? Who has the right to intervene in this way? How do we define the
legitimacy and legality of military intervention, and in whose interests? How do we weigh lives
saved through humanitarian intervention against lives lost through collateral damage? War in the
Name of Humanity examines the philosophy and psychology of war and of those who make
decisions, even private ones, about conflict. Vilmer points out the importance of our choice of
words, especially as it applies to the power of the media and what he calls the “CNN Effect.”
Acutely aware of the sensitivity of these controversial themes, Vilmer guides us to appreciate the
complexity of military intervention throughout history and in current events. He provides a fresh
and eye-opening reexamination of world history, presenting diverse points of view, while in the
end still supporting his own theory regarding the balance between the justifiable reason (jus ad
bellum) for intervention and its logistical and consequential execution (jus in bello).
At thirty-three, Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer is a leading expert in international relations.
Educated at the Sorbonne, Oxford, Yale University, University of Amsterdam, University of
Montréal, and McGill University, he holds doctorates in political science and philosophy, in
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addition to an international law degree. He has taught at several prestigious universities and
was an attaché at the French Embassy in Turkmenistan. Vilmer has written many articles on the
subject of military intervention in publications including Le Figaro and Le Monde, and several
books such as Le Turkménistan (CNRS, 2010) and Anthologie d’éthique animale (PUF, 2011).
War in the Name of Humanity is his twelfth published book in France. For more information,
please visit the author’s website at www.jbjv.com.
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FICTION
La promesse d’Annah/Annah’s Promise
Mohed Altrad
(Éditions Actes Sud, 192 pages, 2012)
In Annah’s Promise, two soul mates fall in love and face their destiny as they meet again and
again over thousands of years.
Annah and Yaïr’s paths cross, and destinies entwine, at a checkpoint between Israel and
Palestine. Their love is an impossible one: He is Jewish and she is Muslim in modern-day Israel.
Unbeknownst to them they have met many times before and they have loved one another over
thousands of years.
They first met and recognized each other as true lovers in 1400 BCE, in a cave in what would one
day be called Judea. Just as they consummate their love, an old man appears on the hillside. He
has been sent, he tells them, by the gods, to let them know that they would be separated but
reunited in another time. This is his promise. They do meet again, many times, over the
centuries. Their struggle to love returns in Babylon in 539 BCE, in the Golan in 73 CE, and
Baghdad in 922 CE. And then in Cordova in 1264, Istanbul in 1666 and, in the present, at a
checkpoint between Israel and Palestine. Each time they meet they experience an intense and
unerring love but always an impossible one.
Set during pivotal moments in history, each of their reunions tells the larger religious and
political story of a Mediterranean world as it evolves into what we know today.
Mohed Altrad is of Syrian origin and has lived in France for many years. He is the author of two
previous novels, Badawi (Actes Sud/Babel, 2002) and L’Hypothèse de Dieu (Actes Sud/Babel,
2006).
Prince d’orchestre/The Prince of the Orchestra
Metin Arditi
(Éditions Actes Sud, 384 pages, 2012)
***Translated sample available***
***Full translation grant offered by Pro Helvetia of the Swiss Arts Council***
Metin Arditi follows his successful novel, Le Turquetto, with a suspenseful tale about the
cutthroat world of classical music, a world he has been part of for thirty years. The Prince of the
Orchestra chronicles the fall of a world-famous conductor from the pinnacle of his career. An
exploration of loss, ambition, and alienation, this novel is enthralling and exciting, yet true to
life.
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Alexis Kandilis is an international conductor at the height of his profession. He is used to
standing ovations at every concert and wildly enthusiastic reviews from the press. The ambition
that served and guided him since he first raised his baton is satisfied, but on a personal level he is
still deeply unfulfilled. Mahler’s haunting Song on the Death of Children plays over and over in
his mind, bringing back ugly childhood memories he can’t erase.
So far, his anguish is managed, thanks to a strange collection of not-quite-true friends and not
really beloved family: his mother, Clio, who forced him to abandon his dreams of composing for
a more prestigious career as a conductor; his wife, Charlotte, whom he despises and frequently
betrays; his bisexual friends Pavlina and Tatiana; Sacha, a young and talented Russian flutist;
and Ted, his agent, who has booked—or overbooked—him for the next three seasons. They all
provide some measure of the reassurance he requires, but it is easy to predict that Kandilis’
glorious world will soon shatter.
The press takes advantage of an altercation between Kandilis and a percussionist during a
rehearsal to attack him, condemning not only his action but also his unorthodox methods. Next,
he has a panic attack before a concert, and then makes an unforgivable mistake during a
performance of Beethoven’s ninth symphony. He is denied the direction of the most prestigious
performance of the decade, the “B16” concerts. In his private life, too, things are falling apart.
Sacha had introduced him to an exclusive poker club made up of multimillionaires, but his new
rich friends begin to distance themselves from him as he becomes increasingly difficult, until
even his manager recommends that he take some time off. Used to being a winner, Kandilis
starts gambling—and losing—heavily. His disintegration accelerates, and at last he enters a
psychiatric hospital. He still has some friends he can count on, but even the most loyal among
them can’t protect him against himself. On his descent into hell, he discovers, but cannot avoid,
the darkness that is in all hearts, including his own.
Born in Turkey, Metin Arditi now lives in Geneva, Switzerland, where he is president of the
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. He founded Les Instruments de la Paix-Genève, a foundation
for the improvement of musical education in Palestine and Israel. Recently he won several prizes
for his novels, including the Prix Jean-Giono and the Prix Page de libraires for his successful
novel, Le Turquetto, which has sold over 60,000 copies in France.
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L’ardeur des pierres/The Intensity of Stones
Céline Curiol
(Éditions Actes Sud, 224 pages, 2012)
Not only is it the finest first novel I have read in many years, but it is, quite
simply, one of the most original and brilliantly executed works of fiction by any
contemporary writer I know of.
—Paul Auster on Voice Over
As Céline Curiol’s novel The Intensity of Stones opens, a young man excavates two beautiful
kamogawa-ishi stones from the snow. Even though it’s dawn and there’s no one in sightwhen he
frees the stones he quickly hides them in a blanket to take them home. The man is a traditional
Japanese gardener. He knows that each stone has a powerful spiritual force, that each is a
guardian of memories, and that if misplaced, its spirit may bring misfortune to the owner.
The young man is Kanto Akinari. He learned the art of setting stones in the purest of Japanese
traditions from his old master. Recently, however, he has been introduced to new influences and
is now under the spell of a stone sculpture by the Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi. And
he has another obsession, one that is not completely artistic. He is mesmerized by a woman who
comes to the café near his apartment. She is dark-skinned with coal-black eyes, and there is
something about her that makes him think she is an American jazz singer, perhaps on tour in
Japan. But she is not; she is a tourist from France. Her face, he believes, is as beautifully sculpted
as any work of stone. He wants to approach her, but he is too shy and prefers to admire her from
afar at first.
Yone, the son of Isamu Noguchi, lives on the floor above Kanto. Yone has never met his father
but he has one of his stones, the only thing he has that belonged to his father, which was given to
him by his mother. Yone was born and raised in Japan, but he has always felt like a foreigner in
his own country. He makes his living by writing questions for a popular TV game show, but he
hopes to become an author one day and write novels that can rival his father’s work. Yet in three
years all he has written is the first sentence of a book. He is not discouraged, however, and is
sure that new sentences will come to him.
Although Kanto and Yone don’t appreciate each other, two obsessions will bring them closer
together: the captivating beauty of the woman in the café, and the power of stones, the guardians
of Isamu Noguchi’s legacy. “Stone is always old and new,” Noguchi once said, “and like a living
being it exists with links to the past, the present, and the future.”
Céline Curiol is the critically acclaimed author of Voix sans issue, published in the United
States as Voice Over by Seven Stories Press in 2008 and translated in nineteen other languages.
Curiol is also the author of Exil Intermédiaire published in France by Actes Sud. She has been
working in New York as an independent journalist for ten years, and she was recently an artistin-residence at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto
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Les Cupidons sont tombés sur la tête/The Cupids Must Be Crazy
Jennie Dorny
(Éditions Ramsay, 288 pages, 2007)
***Five translated chapters available***
The Cupids Must Be Crazy, a delightfully whimsical tale, throws convention to the wind and
tells a love story from the clouds—Heaven, that is. Tempestuous cupids and star-crossed crossdressers help create an unforgettable love triangle. Jennie Dorny strips down the human heart to
show that love and sexuality can be complicated in extremely unusual ways.
Lilian Stevenson, a ceramic artist with a decidedly bohemian edge, lives in the sleepy coastal
New England town of Marblehead, Massachusetts. Lilian uses pottery as her creative outlet, a
sublimation of her deep, inner turmoil, thinking that perhaps by fashioning clay she can
somehow fashion a new self.
When Lilian can no longer deny what she’s known all along, she decides to remold herself and
move to Paris to start over—as a man. Lilian’s life-altering decision alienates both her offbeat
brother and her uncompromising childhood friend. Only one friend, the flamboyant Justin, saves
her from despondency, acts as her confidante, and encourages her make the move.
In Paris, as James Allen Stevenson, an angular swashbuckling version of her female self, she—or
he—at last has the freedom to live openly the life that had long been hidden. In the world that
Dorny has created, each character has a celestial “cupid,” charged with fanning the flames of
love. The cupid assigned to Lilian is uncharacteristically infatuated not with love and lust, but
with art. And for James Allen, that means trouble.
A chance art gallery opening plunges James Allen into romantic bedlam, featuring the curiously
magnetic Sharma family and assorted—by age, gender, and vocation—friends. An Indian cook,
the lesbian leader of an all-girl Celtic band, and an Irish rugby player are just a few of the
characters James Allen must maneuver around and through. Walking the line between
transvestite imposter and heartfelt self-exploration, neither Lilian nor James knows who they are
. . . but someone else soon does. In a thrilling climax, simmering tensions and budding, if
uncertain, love detonate center stage. Cupids and humans reel in circles and re-form into new
patterns of passion and delight.
In this gender-bending saga, love defies all odds, upending a narcissistic and body-obsessed
world. It seems that appearances truly don’t matter. In a lighthearted style, Dorny effortlessly
captures today’s fluid gender categories while reaffirming that timeworn yet uncannily simple
truth: The heart triumphs over all.
Jennie Dorny was born in the United States and currently lives in France. Author of Gambling
Nova (Éditions J’ai Lu, 1999), her debut novel and part two of a trilogy in progress, she writes
primarily science fiction in French and English. The Cupids Must Be Crazy, a stand-alone
novel, is her latest work.
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Avenue des géants/Avenue of the Giants
Marc Dugain
(Éditions Gallimard, 361 pages, 2012)
***80,000 copies sold in three months***
***Rights sold in Germany, Italy, Turkey, and Spain***
Edmund Kemper was an American serial killer, active in California in the 1960s and early
1970s, who started his increasingly ugly criminal life by murdering his grandparents. In Avenue
of the Giants, Marc Dugain has created an account of his life, written in the first-person present,
fictionalized through imagined conversations and statements of feelings but based on very real
events. Dugain shows himself to be a master portraitist of human depravity in this “memoir” of
Edmund Kemper, here renamed Al Kenner.
When Al Kenner was fifteen, he shot his grandparents. He tried to surrender but no one would
listen to his confession because the date was November 22, 1963, the day of John F. Kennedy’s
assassination. Kenner was eventually arrested for his crimes and sentenced to treatment at the
Atascadero State Hospital. He remained there for five years until the psychologist in charge of
his case thought him to be rehabilitated. The psychologist had come to know and trust the highly
intelligent adolescent, who had an IQ higher than Einstein’s. He insists that Kenner—who at this
point was 6'9" tall and weighed 300 pounds—be released to his mother’s custody and that his
records be expunged.
Kenner detests his mother and does everything to avoid moving in with her. He had been raised
in strict confinement at his grandparents’ home (after his mother kicked him out of the house),
and the degree of autonomy he has after his release from the institution is the first he has really
known. Then a motorcycle accident on Avenue of the Giants leaves Kenner with no choice other
than to return to the mother who despised and abused him as a child. His childhood room was in
the basement, next to the furnace. His first gruesome act of revenge is to decapitate one of his
mother’s beloved kittens, feeding the body into the furnace and leaving the kitten’s head where
his mother would find it, in a box next to his bed.
When Kenner again becomes independent, he moves to Santa Cruz and works a series of menial
jobs. A local chief of police “discovers” him and takes him on as an expert on psychopathic
killers. He is odd, to be sure, with his more than conservative views on the social mores of the
time; and his hatred for his mother, whom he visits when he needs money, is palpable. And he
has a habit—which he sees as benign—of picking up female hitchhikers. Yet he seems by his
own account to be reformed. It is not until the end of the novel that his brutal life and criminal
deeds come to light. In the retelling of his life he has left out a few details: He has been on a
killing spree that eventually leaves eight people dead, six female college students he picked up
hitchhiking, his mother, and her best friend. Part psychological thriller, part memoir, part
detective novel, Avenue of the Giants is a riveting and discomforting journey inside the mind of
one of the twentieth century’s most perverted psychopathic killers.
Marc Dugain is the prize-winning and best-selling author of The Officers’ Ward (J. C. Lattès,
1988; Phoenix House, 2000; and Soho Press, 2001; made into the film The Officer’s Ward,
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2001), La malédiction d’Edgar (Editions Gallimard, 2005; film in production), Une exécution
ordinaire (Gallimard, 2007, made into the acclaimed film An Ordinary Execution, 2010, directed
by the author), and L’insomnie des étoiles (Editions Gallimard, 2010), among others. He is also
an acclaimed playwright.
Sacrée Marie
Astrid Eliard
(Éditions Mercure de France, 201 pages, 2012)
Sacrée Marie tells the warm, wise, and witty story of the politically incorrect life of Marie, a
French housewife in search of happiness.
Marie seems to have everything in her life she needs to be happy; a husband—Cornelius—who
loves her, a newly purchased home, the news of her first pregnancy, and even though she is new
to the small town, she has already become friends with a group of mothers.
As time passes, Marie, a naïve and generous person, becomes bored with being a housewife, a
wife, and even a mother. Cornelius is paying less and less attention to her; his field, herbal
medicine, has made him obsessed with plants and less caring of people, especially her. Their son,
Victor, adores his father and ignores her. She has a second son, Sébastien, but he is not the
answer she is looking for. The only consolation Marie can find is in telephone conversations with
Corinne, a woman she has never met but who gives her helpful advice about her relationships,
life, and God.
And then Marie learns that Cornelius is cheating on her with the baker, his only patient, and that
Corinne is a Jehovah ’s Witness whose aim is to get her to join her congregation. Having always
thought that having children would be the high point of her personal development, Marie finds
that the reality is different. So she considers her options: getting help from her female friends or
having an affair of her own. Neither option seems promising. Until one day she rescues a stray
cat and her life changes forever.
Although marital disillusionment is a common topic, a mother’s inability to love her own
children is both less common in literature and delicate in nature. Eliard tackles both with a
caustic yet caring and original voice.
Astrid Eliard was born in 1981 and is the author of two previous books, Nuits de noces (2010)
and Déjà l’automne (2011), both published by Mercure de France.
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Sauver Mozart/Saving Mozart
Raphaël Jerusalmy
(Éditions Actes Sud, 149 pages, 2012)
A shocking and devastating first novel . . . With its sober tone, sarcasm, and
feverish pace, this concerto in one voice is without doubt a success.
—L’Express
Otto J. Steiner kept a journal from July 1939 to August 1940. Like anyone, he wrote about his
days, but now, in the sanatorium, his days have become narrow. Before he was admitted to the
Sanatorium of Salzburg, before he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, he was a crotchety music
critic. He probably has no family left or none he is in contact with. His wife has died and he
doesn’t know what happened to his sister. He has a son, but they are estranged and the last he
heard his son was living in Palestine. Otto hopes that one day his son will read his journal and
understand him. He does not try to contact his son for fear it will reveal his secret: He is Jewish.
Then Otto’s friend Hans, an impresario and his former editor, asks him to help design a program
celebrating a historic meeting between Hitler and Mussolini to take place at the Brenner Pass.
Otto accepts and draws up a musical program to suit the occasion. He then goes along for the trip
to help manage the musicians. While there, he comes within a hair’s breadth of changing the
course of history. His attempt fails, but he returns with the realization that although he could not
manage to assassinate the leader of the terrifying new world order, at least he could try do
something to defy him.
When Hans asks him to write the program notes for the next annual Festspiele, the program
choices distress him. They are all meant to portray the glory of the Reich. Bombastic, Otto
thinks, bombastic and unoriginal. His first draft, showing too much of his thinking, is rejected by
Hans. He reluctantly reworks the text, this time punctuating the sentences as if they were a
speech by the already infamous Goebbels.
His main criticism of the program is that it presents Mozart right after the Teutonic Salzburger
Hof by Jergen, which is preceded by Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. Otto pleads with Hans
for a five-minute interlude before the Mozart Concerto in C Major. During the interlude, a solo
violin would play something to smooth the transition. Mozart would be saved from association
with the political impact of the rest of the program. Otto composes the interlude piece himself,
and unbeknownst to his friend makes it a variation on an old Jewish folk song. The violinist
performs it to perfection, rousing the audience which is composed mostly of the leaders of the
SS. The hall resounds with the tapping feet of the audience, deeply amusing Otto. The next day
he writes an anonymous letter to the newspaper decrying the piece as a Jewish composition. Otto
knows his act may cost him his life, but at least he has made a mark, shown some defiance, and
saved Mozart.
Raphaël Jerusalmy attended the prestigious École Normale Supérieure and the Sorbonne before
becoming a secret service agent for the Israeli army. After leaving the army, he did
humanitarian and educational work. He presently works in an antique bookstore in Tel Aviv.
Saving Mozart is his first novel.
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Deux jeunes artistes au chômage/The Sleepworker
Cyrille Martinez
(Buchet Chastel, 130 pages, 2011)
Like a work of contemporary art, Cyrille Martinez’s The Sleepworker is rich in self-reflection
and commentary on the very nature of art, writing, literature, and the commercialization thereof.
In a beguiling style, devilishly light and seductively funny, Martinez invents an absurd world
where people, events, and things seem to fall into place in the service of the language itself. Each
sentence builds on the hilarity of the last, but one by one they lead you in unexpected ways to
places you never see coming.
John is a poet. Only John almost never writes poems, because he is also unemployed. He lives
with four friends, and together they make up the band of five. They squat in a loft apartment in
New York New York—a fantastical city that resembles not only the Big Apple, but also Paris,
London, and any other city where artists live. They throw fabulous parties every night and
practice group sodomy. That is, until John meets Andy.
Andy is an artist. Well, he is if you define art as something that people don’t want but the artist
deems desirable to give them anyway. His work includes the Double-Murder Gun, which is just
as likely to kill the shooter as the intended victim; and the Unwashing Machine, which efficiently
rubs dirt into clean clothes. A gallery owner with Tourette syndrome “discovers” his work and
Andy is on his way to being famous. John, on the other hand, is hard at work at being
unemployed, drinking all night and sleeping all day—which leaves him very little time for
writing poems. Andy, watching him sleep, has an intriguing idea for a piece of art that he thinks
will allow John to get paid for what he does best.
Very, very loosely based on the real lives of Andy Warhol and John Giorno, The Sleepworker
takes one small snippet of reality and weaves it into a surreal and wacky landscape in which
Martinez can happily—for both writer and reader—play with language, humor, story, art, and
artists.
Cyrille Martinez is a poet and novelist. He has contributed to numerous reviews, and plays in
two bands. He has performed at public readings in France and abroad on the stereotypes of
modern language, slang, slogans, jargon, and the like. The Sleepworker is his second novel. His
first, L’enlèvement de Bill Clinton, was published by Les 400 Coups in 2008.
L’ombre d’un homme/Shadow of a Man
Bénédicte des Mazery
(Éditions Anne Carrière, 164 pages, 2012)
The German occupation of France was experienced by the nation in several different ways, but
everyone who lived through that period had their own experiences, their own stories. Years after
the occupation ended, at a time when the young think of the tales of the time as “those old
stories,” what happened continues to influence their lives. Shadow of a Man offers an original
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and subtle look at the dark times of the German occupation by revealing the touching story of
Alfred, an old man seeking redemption for the sins of others.
Alfred Vigneux is growing old in the Parisian apartment that once was his childhood home. He
lives a quiet, solitary life. And then, one day, seemingly at random, he decides to offer his
downstairs apartment to a poor family in exchange for nothing more than a meal with them every
night. Adèle is so happy to have a place to live that she does not question the strange
arrangement. She thinks Alfred is just a lonely old man in need of company. But her twelveyear-old son, Léo, is suspicious: There must be a reason why this stranger would offer so much
that would suddenly change their lives. Léo wants to know what is behind the generosity. And so
starts a peculiar game of hide-and-seek between the old man and the young boy. For Léo is
right—Alfred indeed is hiding a secret that he is not yet ready to reveal.
Chance may have brought Léo’s family to Alfred, but it was a twist of fate that forced the old
man to face his past. Alfred was only a teenager during the occupation, but he never forgot about
Charlotte, his lovely upstairs neighbor, who was deported. He never forgot, either, how his
father, a collaborator, refused to help the young woman. The time has come for him to settle
accounts from his past, but can the harm be undone? Can bad acts be transformed by good deeds
done to a third party?
Bénédicte des Mazery is a former journalist. She lives in Paris, and Shadow of a Man is her
fourth novel. Her three previous novels are Pour solde de tout compte (Éditions Bérénice, 1999),
Les morts ne parlent pas (Éditions Anne Carrière, 2005), and La Vie tranchée (Éditions Anne
Carrière, 2008).
Les Veilleurs/The Watchers
Vincent Message
(Le Seuil, 636 pages, 2009)
***Sample translation by Linda Coverdale available***
This erudite debut is a great success, masterful and filled with subtle literary
references.
—artpress
Vincent Message leaves the reader breathless.
—Le Figaro
A great novel that makes one think about the complexity of the human mind.
—L’Express
Nexus is a madman, a murderer, and an amnesiac who falls asleep on his victims’ still-warm
bodies. In The Watchers, a complex and literary debut, Vincent Message unravels Nexus’
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labyrinthine psyche via a detective who is working for a paranoid politician and a psychiatrist
eager to prove that the justice system unfairly and too swiftly locked up a sick man.
The novel opens at Nexus’ trial. Witnesses testify that he was found asleep, curled up on three
dead bodies, his head resting on a bloody bosom. Nexus shows no remorse, and after four days,
he is found guilty and condemned to life in prison.
Samuel Drake, the governor of the region, is convinced, however, that the murders were not the
random acts of a madman, but a conspiracy to kill Drake’s secret mistress and ruin his chances
for reelection. He has Nexus transferred from prison to an insane asylum and hires Detective
Rilviero to investigate. Rilviero teams up with Nexus’ psychiatrist, Joachim Traumfreund, to get
to the bottom of his baffling behavior. Their investigation takes them deep into the mountains, to
a refuge ironically shaped like a boat, and to even greater depths within the madman’s
hypersomniac dream world, a place he calls Seabra.
Message’s haunting tale of morality and madness calls into question the very foundations of
contemporary society and even the simplest accepted definition of madness. This elliptic and
provocative novel constructs and deconstructs notions of reality, taking the reader ever further
from the comfort of the usual views of sanity.
Vincent Message holds a degree from the École Normale Supérieure and teaches at the
Université de Paris VIII-Saint Dénis. He previously taught French literature and culture at
Columbia University. The Watchers is his first novel.
Fleur de béton/Flowers in Concrete
Wilfried N’Sondé
(Éditions Actes Sud, 211 pages, 2012)
What is destiny? Is it inborn, or can our hopes and dreams transform our lives? Flowers in
Concrete, a coming-of-age novel—the third by prize-winning Congolese author Wilfried
N’Sondé, shows how Rosa Maria, a first-generation French woman living in the Parisian
suburbs, changes her own destiny.
Young Rosa Maria dreams of sun, love, and a quiet life. Above all she dreams of leaving the
housing projects on the outskirts of Paris where she lives with her two sisters and their parents,
Sicilian immigrants who came in search of a better life in France. But her father has lost his job,
and her mother is working long hours to make enough money to pay for the basic necessities.
Since her older brother, Antonio, died of a drug overdose, the family is torn apart, and her father
is increasingly reclusive.
But perhaps there is hope for Rosa Maria. She is secretly in love with Jason, who is young,
black, and beautiful and doesn’t pay much attention to her. Her two best friends are Margarine, a
woman who prostitutes herself in an abandoned basement, and Mouloud, a simple-minded boy
who had admired Antonio.
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The only real entertainment and escape for the young people of the projects is an illegal club.
When the police shut down the club, a riot ensues. Rosa Maria and Jason escape the scene and
take refuge in Jason’s aunt’s apartment. The turn of events changes their lives.
Flowers in Concrete sharply opposes urban violence with the force of innocence. N’Sondé
brilliantly describes everyday life in the projects, using a combination of street slang and poetic
prose. He shows the difficulty of living in multiracial ghettos, the fear of the police, and the
systematic recourse to violence. Flowers in Concrete presents a realist vision of the world of
immigrants, and helps us understand the problems of integration and the future of young people
who must find their way through an urban desert.
Wilfried N’Sondé was born in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo. In 1973, he
moved with his family to France and spent his childhood in an impoverished and overcrowded
housing project. As an adult, he left France for Germany, became a famous musician, and then
an educator. He now lives in Berlin and works as an educator for troubled children. The Heart
of the Leopard Children, his first novel, was awarded the 2007 Senghor Prize for Literary
Creation and the 2007 Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie. His second novel, Le
silence des esprits, was published in 2010 by Actes Sud.
Notre nuit tombée/Nightfall
Julie de la Patellière
(Éditions Denoël, 189 pages, 2012)
***One of Le Figaro Littéraire’s top 5 debut novels January 2012***
***Sample translation available***
With Nightfall Julie de la Patellière delivers a poetic first novel about the madness
of love.
—Le Monde des Livres
A very promising . . . Hitchcock-like closed-door drama.
—LivresHebdo
Julie de la Patellière’s debut novel, Nightfall, balances on the fragile cusp between love and
madness. A striking combination of fantasy and thriller, this suspenseful novel describes the
emotional grappling and ultimate descent into lunacy of a man whose wife suddenly vanishes
into thin air.
Marc Chalgrin is a devoted and doting Parisian husband who lives vicariously through his
scholarly but far more effervescent Swedish-American wife, Liv Andersson. One night he
returns from his job at the Musée d’Orsay to discover that their apartment is deserted. Liv has
completely and inexplicably disappeared. No traces of foul play or romantic betrayal can be
found, leaving him bewildered and in a state of panic.
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As days and then months pass, his panic turns to disbelief and melancholy and finally spirals into
suspicion and paranoia. The police openly mock him, crudely insinuating that Liv, like other
women before her, found a better man. Wedding photos disappear; friends act as though nothing
happened; Marc tumbles into self-doubt. Obsessive reveries of a happy past devour his thoughts.
His increasing confusion leads him to follow a girl eerily similar to Liv and even to accuse
Antoine, his best friend, of adultery.
Pouring over the “missed connections” classifieds of Libération, Marc unearths mysterious clues
leading to strange misgivings and even stranger rendezvous. He meets his otherworldly
doppelgänger, an older, dodgier Marc Chalgrin, further fracturing his fragile existence. Liv’s
absence morphs into a gigantesque presence, ripping him apart.
De la Patellière poetically and disquietingly portrays a man bound by love and destroyed by love
lost. In a mind-bending narrative dash, she keeps the reader in limbo, too: Did Liv ever love
Marc? Did Liv even exist? Does Marc harbor more sinister intentions? Nightfall succeeds in the
subtle art of painting slow, inexorable psychosis brought on by that fundamental fear of the
human condition: being alone.
Daughter of French film director and scriptwriter Denys de la Patellière, Julie de la Patellière
is thirty years old and currently splits her time between Paris and Lisbon. Nightfall is her first
novel.
Bon rétablissement/Feel Better
Marie-Sabine Roger
(Éditions du Rouergue, 206 pages, 2012)
***Winner of the 2012 L’Express Prize***
***Film rights sold to Jean Becker, the filmmaker of My Afternoons with Margueritte, also
adapted from a novel by Marie-Sabine Roger***
***Previous novel sold in Germany with more than 300,000 copies sold, Italy, Spain,
Norway, Korea, and the Netherlands***
***Translated sample available***
Booksellers love her, just like her readers. [ . . . ] The voice is true, delightful, and
never bland. This is great art.
—L’Express Styles
We fall in love with the lively style of the novelist, with her scathing humor, her
tricks, her artful language which flirts with the daring of a Frédéric Dard.
—La Vie
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Marie-Sabine Roger’s novels tell deeply human stories that are both witty and entertaining. Feel
Better, her most critically acclaimed work, tells the story of a grumpy widower who wakes up in
a hospital bed with no recollection of what put him there.
Jean-Pierre Fabre is a peevish man, solitary, and prematurely old at sixty-seven; he’s a selfdescribed “widower, without a dog or children.” He’s in the hospital because of a mysterious fall
into the Seine from a bridge in the dark hours of the night. Fabre was almost dead when he was
rescued by a male prostitute who had been standing on the banks of the river.
With nothing else to do in the hospital, Fabre decides to write his memoir. He was, he writes, an
“enfant terrible” in his teens, and thus he is neither surprised nor disappointed by what he has
become.
But he soon realizes that nothing in his past could have prepared him for the strange turn his life
is taking. At first he tries to appear to the hospital staff and invasive patients like a simple,
deranged misanthrope. But that approach is stymied by the detective in charge of investigating
his accident, the prostitute who pulled him from the Seine, and the chubby, ill-mannered
fourteen-year-old girl who keeps bugging him to check her Facebook page on his laptop. None
of them are bothered by or even notice his aloofness. As his hospital stay continues, Fabre’s soft
side starts to get the better of him, and he understands that it’s never too late to reinvent oneself.
Marie-Sabine Roger is the author of many award-winning novels for both younger readers and
adults, including Le Quatrième soupirail, Prix Sorcières 2006; Vivement l’avenir, Prix
Marguerite Audoux 2010; and La Tête en friche, which has sold 70,000 copies in France,
310,000 copies in Germany, translated in six countries, and has been adapted into a movie
starring Gerard Depardieu, My Afternoons with Margueritte, now available on Netflix.
La Vie contrariée de Louise/Louise’s Upsetting Life
Corinne Royer
(Éditions Héloïse d’Ormesson, 232 pages, 2012)
A small red notebook, his French grandmother’s diary, gives an American man a completely
different perspective of who he is. His French family, which he never knew existed, comes from a
small village that saved many thousands of Jewish children during World War II.
James Nicholson, an American from New York, has just learned from his dying father that he
has a French grandmother, Louise. When his father dies, James tries to untangle the meaning of
his concealed heritage. He travels to Louise’s village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a mostly
Huguenot town in southern France. As he travels, he plans his first visit with her in the nursing
home where she lives. When he arrives at the home, however, he learns that she died that same
morning. Louise has left behind nothing except a red notebook. Although disappointed that he
will not get to know Louise in person, James soon understands that the notebook is his window
into her life, and his family’s past. She has bequeathed him her never-before-revealed memoir of
the events of the village during WWII.
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To render the experience more vivid, James hires Nina, a waitress in the hotel café, to read the
diary to him. The story is told in alternating voices—that of contemporary James, and that of his
grandmother as read by Nina. Louise’s words explain her day-to-day life in the village that
protected thousands of young Jews during the Nazi Occupation of France. On a more personal
level, the notebook reveals something more sinister, something that Louise kept secret until her
death. She had had a liaison with Franz, a German officer, and there had been a hidden
pregnancy. James is confounded by both disclosures, but there is another mystery, perhaps more
unsettling. What happened to the eighteen Jewish children Louise personally hid from the
Germans?
This story is inspired by historical fact. The rescue activities were initiated by the town’s pastor,
André Trocme, and his wife, Magda. Thirty-two inhabitants of Le Chambon-Sur-Lignon were
named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.
Corinne Royer’s novel, Louise’s Upsetting Life, is her second book, following the success of her
first, M comme Mohican (Éditions Héloïse d’Ormesson, 2009). She is also a director of
documentary films.
Je n’ai pas fini de regarder le monde/I’m Not Done Looking at the World
David Thomas
(Éditions Albin Michel, 177 pages, 2012)
***Translated sample available***
If David Thomas were a bird, he would be a Macaw for the brilliance of his quill
and prose, if he were a profession, he would be a lace-maker for his infinite
delicacy, if he were a tree, he would be a Chestnut tree, for its symbols of
braveness and melancholy. But David Thomas is just fine being one of the most
brilliant French novelists of his generation.
—Femmes d’Aujourd’hui
In a style somewhere between Etgar Keret and David Lodge, David Thomas, winner of the
French Orange Prize in 2011, confirms his talent for writing in a shorter form. His new collection
of short stories, I’m Not Done Looking at the World, is composed of short texts, no more than
three or four pages each, that are fierce, funny, and deceptively simple. Each, however, is often
deep and thought-provoking and begs for rereading, or reading aloud.
The seventy short stories are filled with characters who are both absurd and familiar—a man
who can’t live without his wife’s yelling, a misanthropic billionaire, a trader who reinvents
himself as a novelist, and a man who takes dangerous risks with his voluptuous lover. Thomas
uses each sketch to dramatize the mundane details of our daily lives. Nothing is spared. Our
pettiness, our cruelties, and the guilty compromises we reach with ourselves are all exposed. But
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whether the stories make us laugh or squirm, all the characters have an endearing quality that we
recognize as part of the human condition.
Un silence de clairière/The Silence of a Clearing
David Thomas
(Éditions Albin Michel, 174 pages, 2011)
***Winner of the 2011 French Orange Prize***
A darkly funny and sharply observant debut novel, The Silence of a Clearing relates one man’s
unusual journey in search of self and a new beginning.
Adrien Lipnitsky is a disenchanted writer whose inner thoughts and long-lasting sleeplessness
have brought him to the edge of a breakdown. He loves his wife, Sarah, but no longer desires
her. And, although he is fighting writer’s block, he doesn’t know why he decided to become a
writer in the first place.
He has tried everything he can think of to find inspiration: He sees a psychiatrist once a week for
madly expensive naps. He shaves his head, then his eyebrows, and finally his entire body. He
even tries induced apnea by diving into the local swimming pool. Nothing has helped. He
doesn’t know who he is anymore, and to try to make sense of his life, he decides to search for his
older brother, a globetrotter, who disappeared over a year ago. His brother once wrote, “The free
man is the one who knows the forest.” Adrian now desires the sort of freedom his brother
described, even though at the time the advice meant nothing to him. His journey takes him to
Copenhagen, and then to the Angermanland in Northern Sweden, where, in the silence of a
clearing, he finds the life hidden inside him . . . and comes to understand what his brother meant
and why he himself needed to go through this odd rite of passage. Finally he is able to return
home and take hold of his life.
David Thomas is a playwright and a scriptwriter in addition to being a novelist and short story
writer. The literary prizes he has been awarded include the prix de la Découverte 2009 de la
Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco for his collection of short stories, La patience des buffles
sous la pluie (2009), and the Prix Orange du livre 2011 for his first novel, The Silence of a
Clearing.
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GRAPHIC NOVELS
Une si jolie petite guerre/
Such a Pretty Little War
Marcelino Truong
Black-and-white and color illustrations
(Éditions Denoël, 224 pages, October 2012)
Marcelino Truong’s memories of his childhood in
Vietnam in the 1960s form the core of this
engrossing and brilliant graphic novel. He
conjures up for himself and for us the bygone
places, times, events, and feelings that changed
his country, our world, and most of all, his life.
He draws his story in a subtle fashion at once
objective and impressionistic . . . a boy’s story
that took place in a time that defines history.
In January 1961, John F. Kennedy becomes the
thirty-fifth president of the United States. Eager
to stop the spread of Communism in Asia, he launches Operation Beef-Up, which is meant to
reinforce American economic and military help to the Republic of Vietnam. In July of that year,
little Marcelino Truong and his family move to Saigon. Marcelino’s father is a Vietnamese
journalist who serves as an interpreter for President Ngo Dinh Diem’s English-speaking visitors.
His mother, a housewife, struggles with manic depression. Marcelino and his parents become
privileged players in and witnesses to the twisted politics implemented by a government
complicated by a range of imperatives: nationalism, the rejection of its former colonial master,
France, and a fascination for America. Marcelino depicts his life in the South Vietnamese capital
city as the war intensifies day by day and surrender is close at hand. Family stories become
intertwined with evolving history, and small delights are surrounded by the death of a country, a
culture, a way of being and thinking.
Seldom do the visual and the verbal elements of a graphic novel work so completely as a unit,
letting us hear the voices of the past as we look through the eyes of the present.
Marcelino Truong was born in 1957 in the Philippines. His father is Vietnamese and his mother
is French. An illustrator and a painter, he is a graduate of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of
Paris and holds an Agrégation in English. He wrote and illustrated several children’s books, and
received the Bologna Children’s Book Fair Prize in 1995. He is also a regular contributor as a
graphic artist to various newspapers and magazines such as Elle and Libération. He has three
daughters, and lives and works in Paris.
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HISTORY
Le dossier secret de l’affaire Dreyfus/The Secret File of the Dreyfus Affair
Pierre Gervais, Pauline Peretz, and Pierre Stutin
(Alma Éditeur, 356 pages, Fall 2012)
***Translated sample available***
Uncovering the original “secret file” of the Dreyfus Affair, three French historians reveal how
this trial was not only about an anti-Semitic conspiracy in the highest ranks of the military to
disgrace a Jewish army officer, but also how another prejudice was at work in the results of the
proceedings: homophobia.
The Dreyfus Affair—the famous account of French Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus, unjustly
convicted of treason and espionage in 1894—was the most significant political and social crisis
of fin-de-siècle Europe. Eventually, the Jewish officer was exonerated, but only after he had
suffered nearly five years of imprisonment on Devil’s Island.
His guilt had not been questioned because members of a French counterespionage agency had
forged numerous documents and given false testimony. Until now, most modern historians have
worked with the second version of the trial’s file that contains more than 400 documents, most of
which were forged and added on later. Gervais, Peretz, and Stutin, however, have chosen another
path. At Gervais’ suggestion, they reread the original version of the “secret file,” which had
never been completely reconstructed after its dilution and encryption for the second trial. They
found that this file contained pieces of correspondence between two military attachés who
worked with the French Army, the German Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen and the Italian
Alessandro Panizzardi, whose only connection to Alfred Dreyfus consisted of the mention of a
certain “D” in one letter. But the letters between the men clearly contained homosexual content,
and for the 1894 trial they were deliberately highlighted by the French secret services to help
convince the jury to find Dreyfus guilty—in spite of the fact that Dreyfus himself was never
shown to be homosexual.
Gervais, Peretz, and Stutin demonstrate that the political–cultural context of the time often linked
homophobia and anti-Semitism. In The Secret File of the Dreyfus Affair, they explore why this
dimension of the Dreyfus Affair has been largely ignored to this day, and why the Dreyfus
scandal still has much to teach us. Readers who are interested in Dreyfus and the hitherto
unexplored relationship between anti-Semitism and homophobia in his time will be fascinated by
the authors’ information and insights.
Pierre Gervais is an associate professor in American History at the École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales/Université Paris VIII. He is the author of Les Origines de la révolution
industrielle aux Etats-Unis (2004), which was awarded the Willi Paul Adams prize of the
Organization of American Historians in 2007. His most recent publication in English is “Neither
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Imperial, nor Atlantic: A Merchant Perspective on International Trade in the 18th Century,”
History of European Ideas, 2008.
Pauline Peretz is a professor of contemporary history at the University of Nantes. A specialist on
the United States and contemporary international affairs, she has lectured on contemporary
politics at the Collège de France. She is the author of Le combat pour les Juifs soviétiques,
Washington-Moscou-Jérusalem 1953–1990 (Armand Colin, 2006), to be published in English by
Holmes & Meier in 2013. Peretz is on a number of editorial committees, among them La Vie des
Idées and Transatlantica. She is a member of the Academic Advisory Council for the Soviet
Jewry Archival Project (American Jewish Historical Society).
Pierre Stutin is an expert in the digitization of historical documents and a specialist in the Third
Republic of France and the Dreyfus Affair. He has launched a website to accompany the release
of The Secret File of the Dreyfus Affair: www.affairedreyfus.com. He is currently working on the
digitization of all the judiciary sources of the Dreyfus Affair for the Lorraine Beitler Collection
of the University of Pennsylvania.
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PHILOSOPHY
Théorie générale des victimes/A General Theory of Victimhood
François Laruelle
(Librairie Arthème Fayard, 200 pages, 2012)
A General Theory of Victimhood turns the hierarchy of Good versus Evil upside-down and
sideways as François Laruelle illustrates the way in which all humans are victims who receive,
bear, and demonstrate evil; participating in the criminal while not necessarily being the cause of
it. While the issues of domination, power, and strength have been abundantly explored in the
field of philosophy, Laruelle presents a different perspective in this eagerly anticipated work. He
continues with the application of his theory of “non-philosophy” in a new dialectic pertaining to
the concrete essence of ethics: the victim.
In addition to the connection between victims and their oppressors, Laruelle examines the
awkward and treacherous relationship between victims and the intellectuals who objectify them.
The victims are ultimately denied the significance of their individual identities by the
philosophically dominant “public/media-friendly intellectual,” Laruelle claims. They are the
ones who ultimately strip, eulogize, and/or politicize victims through words and images and
direct the world’s attention to the writer or the listener, while the victims are forgotten. The
“generic intellectual” works under a moral philosophy that focuses more on the decisive
influence of the victim rather than on the exterior force of the powers that be and abstract
philosophy.
In this complex work, Laruelle explores the inherent paradoxes of victimhood, where the
survivor is defined by the death or difficulties of others, and the victim has sympathy for his
executioner. The themes of action versus passivity, “weak force” and “strong force,” among
others, bring us to the vicious circle that kills the victim over and over again.
François Laruelle is an internationally renowned philosopher of aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics,
and theology. He is a professor emeritus of contemporary philosophy at the Université Paris
Ouest Nanterre La Défense and former Program Director at the International College of
Philosophy. Particularly noted for founding the “non-philosophy” concept, Laruelle currently
directs the International Non-Philosophy Organization. He is the author of more than twenty
books published in France, several of which have been translated and published in English,
including Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to Non-Philosophy (Continuum,
2011), Future Christ: A Lesson in Heresy (Continuum, 2011), and The Non-Philosophy Project
(Telos Press, 2012).
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L’influence de l’odeur des croissants chauds sur la bonté humaine et autres questions de
philosophie morale expérimentale/The Influence of the Smell of Warm Croissants on Human
Kindness and Other Questions of Experimental Moral Philosophy
Ruwen Ogien
(Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle, 326 pages, 2012)
***Foreign rights sold to Aguilar (Spain), Dasan Books (Korea), and Laterza (Italy)***
***Translated sample available***
Simply by analyzing the moral problems of each and every one of us, Ruwen
Ogien takes the stance of ‘minimal ethics’. His book reads like a good mystery
novel in which the detective proves against all odds that there may be no crime,
no victim, and no murderer.
—Books & Ideas
“Accessible” and “readable” are terms often used to describe what might be thought of as
“difficult” texts. The Influence of the Smell of Warm Croissants is both, but it is also a charming
and delightful study of the school of minimal ethics. Minimal ethics, which maintains that in
ethics there is no fundamental truth, has been the subject of the work of philosopher Ruwen
Ogien for over three decades. His thinking is rooted in a sense of neutrality about the concepts of
right and wrong. In The Influence of the Smell of Warm Croissants, he offers thoughtful and
provocative challenges to those who continue to hold more traditional views.
Most philosophers believe that in order to understand moral philosophy, one must first read all
the fundamental texts on the history of ideas. Since most of these doctrines contradict each other,
Ogien finds the approach too limited; he prefers to rely on an experimental moral philosophy
which proves that everything in ethics needs to be, and in fact must be, questioned.
In the first part of the book, Ogien offers nineteen experiments to test our moral grounds. The
experiments present such questions as: Is it acceptable to kill a pedestrian in order to save five
people on their way to the hospital? Is a short and mediocre life better than no life at all? Can
incest be morally acceptable between two consenting adults? In Ogien’s view, the choice
between acting like a monster or a saint often depends on the most mundane circumstances, such
as finding a dollar bill in the street or the irresistible smell of warm croissants in the morning.
The moral conundrums are followed, in the second part of the book, by a clarification of the
methodological problems that were intuitively established while reading the first part. The
Influence of the Smell of Warm Croissants is a book for philosophers, students of philosophy,
and all people who think deeply about right and wrong. It is a stimulating incitement to further
thought and an animated debate in the realm of experimental moral philosophy.
Ruwen Ogien holds doctorates in both philosophy and social anthropology. He is a director of
research in moral philosophy at the CNRS and sits on the editorial board of the review Raison
Publique. He has participated in the Walls & Bridges festival in New York, notably in a
roundtable at the New School, on (Self) Censorship: Art, Morality and Decency. Ogien’s most
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recent works include Le Corps et L’argent (La Musardine, 2010) and La vie, la mort, l’Etat: Le
débat bioéthique (Grasset, 2009).
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RELIGION
Dieu/God
Frédéric Lenoir
(Éditions Robert Laffont, 312 pages, 2011)
***75,000 copies sold in France***
***Rights sold in Italy, Spain, Brazil, Korea, and Croatia***
Frédéric Lenoir is an internationally renowned philosopher, sociologist, and religious historian
whose works have combined sales of over 2 million copies with translations in 25 languages. In
the original French edition of God, Lenoir worked with the celebrated journalist Marie Drucker,
providing answers to her insightful and probing questions about God and religion. For foreign
markets the book can be presented as written or adapted into a narrative nonfiction format.
In God, Lenoir, who is known for his highly accessible work, tells the history of God—“If,” as
he says, “one exists.” Lenoir presents a wide range of religions and their views of God; he covers
Buddhism, Hinduism, and Shintoism, but places his emphasis on Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam. Starting from prehistory and moving to the present day, Lenoir takes the reader from the
beginnings of the human relationship to God—or gods—explaining the origins of many common
and lesser-known beliefs and traditions.
The text is wide-ranging, almost all-encompassing: Lenoir addresses the first conceptions of
higher spirits, the onset and upset of monotheism, and the place of written religious documents.
Concerning the latter, in this modern time, he describes the process by which conservatives take
inspiration from the Bible rather than following it to the letter. He does not ignore the place of
women in relation to God, pointing out that in nearly all religions women are treated as inferior
to men even if the original documents are not clear on the subject. The nonreligious views of
God are also considered: Lenoir provides the views on God by well-known philosophers
throughout the years and devotes a chapter to atheism.
God stands out from other discussions of God because of Lenoir’s objective analysis. He
provides the information, closely detailed, without making judgments. He has provided a clear,
comprehensive history of God that is a delight to read as well as a long-lasting work of reference.
Frédéric Lenoir is a research associate at l’EHESS (L’École des hautes études en sciences
sociales) and editor-in-chief of the magazine Le Monde des religions. His previous works
include the best-selling spiritual thriller L’oracle della Luna (The Angel’s Promise, Pegasus,
2008, Albin Michel, 2006), Comment Jésus est devenu Dieu (Fayard, 2010), and Petit traité de
vie intérieure (Plon, 2010). He has also written essays, contributed to encyclopedias, done indepth interviews, and written comic books.
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SELF-HELP
Méditer jour après jour/Meditating Every Day
Christophe André
Illustrated with 25 paintings, accompanied by an audio CD
(Éditions de L’Iconoclaste, 304 pages, 2011)
***More than 150,000 copies sold***
***English sample available***
***Foreign rights sold in Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Korea, China, Japan, and
Norway***
To live mindfully is to be calmly aware of the present moment. To adopt this
disposition can radically affect our relationship to the world we live in. It can
alleviate our suffering and transcend our joys. Mindfulness also refers to a form of
meditation; one which is quick and easy to learn, but which can take years to fully
master.
—Christophe André
Mixing art appreciation, self-awareness, and multimedia (audio CD), French psychiatrist
Christophe André invites the readers of his new best-seller, Meditating Every Day, to indulge in
a profound and unusual encounter with themselves through meditation.
Meditation has been proven to ease stress and tension, improve metabolism, and enhance brain
function. It has become increasingly popular around the world and is practiced by a wide range
of people from all walks of life. Dr. André, who has been meditating for ten years and is
recognized as an authority in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, introduces the reader to his
method through easy-to-understand directions, inspiring illustrations, and a CD of guided
meditations.
Each of the twenty-five lessons tackles a different facet of meditation: breathing, being
comfortable in one’s body, loving and accepting one’s self, making room for one’s emotions . . .
At the end of each chapter, there is an exercise accompanied by a five- to fifteen-minute-long
audio supplement, making it easy for the reader to experiment with André’s approach. André has
also selected reproductions of masterpieces by Rembrandt, Monet, Hopper, Turner, and many
other painters to illustrate each lesson and help focus the mental and physical reality of the
training.
An illustrated psychology book to teach meditation, Meditating Every Day has been at the top of
the LivresHebdo best-seller list for thirty-two straight weeks.
Christophe André is a psychiatrist at the Hôpital Sainte Anne in Paris. He is an expert on
anxiety, self-esteem disorders, and the psychology of happiness. He was one of the first doctors
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to introduce meditation or “mindfulness therapy” into his practice. He is the author of several
best-selling books including De l’art du bonheur (L’iconoclaste, 2006), L’estime de soi (2006),
and La Force des émotions (2001) at Éditions Odile Jacob, co-written with François Lelord, the
international best-selling author of Hector and the Search for Happiness (Penguin, 2010). He
also co-authored the preface of La thérapie cognitive basée sur la pleine conscience pour la
dépression (de Boeck, 2006) with Mathieu Ricard.
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SOCIOLOGY
Souci de soi, conscience du monde: Vers une religion globale/
The Care of the Self and Consciousness of the World: The Globalization of Beliefs
Raphaël Liogier
(Éditions Armand Colin, 280 pages, 2012)
We speak of the world getting smaller, of it being all the same. But what does that mean in
practice? The Care of the Self and Consciousness of the World: The Globalization of Beliefs, by
Raphaël Liogier, is a controversial socio-anthropological examination of our new reality.
Our contemporaries are increasingly individualistic. Their individualism shows itself in their
obsession with physical appearance, personal development, egocentric happiness, and personal
well-being. Yet, even at this time of individualism, we have never been more concerned with the
whole world around us, more conscious of ecological issues and sustainable development, more
aware of the need for intercultural dialogue and humanitarian activism and a striving for
universal harmony and world peace. On one side there is the individual; on the other, the global.
These two sides of humanity appear as irreconcilable poles—but they have given rise to a new
form of religiosity, “individuo-globalism.” This individuo-globalist faith is quietly changing
human culture. Liogier explains how this subtle but radical change came about and how it affects
us consciously or subconsciously in all aspects of our lives.
He shows, for example, that what was counterculture in the 1950s, and more recently dismissed
as “new age,” now—whether we realize it or not—forms the backdrop of our lives. We have
achieved a hypermodernity in which the new individuo-globalist lives according to a new set of
tenets. The new mythology on which these ideas rest has three parts: Gnosism, Creativity, and
Well-Being. Gnosism, here pertaining to an intuitive, shared, all-accepting global spirituality, is
expressed through adherence to meditation and diverse practices aimed at knowledge of the self.
Creativity relates to the consecration of the quest for self-improvement and ever-evolving
personal growth. Well-Being assumes the form of an inherent belief in the possibility of
achieving happiness and ever-improving, overarching physical and spiritual health through such
practices as holistic healing and eating organic foods.
From a sociological standpoint, Liogier defends the idea that there is no multiplication of beliefs,
but rather a global unification. There is no clash of civilizations in his view, but more a clash of
postures, of religious identities. From a philosophical standpoint, he defines the era we are in as
“active modernity.” To him there is no such thing as “post-modern,” because modernity until
now was only potential and generally written in declarations, political constitutions,
philosophical treatises, and ways of life for small communities. Today modernity is not only
theoretical or legal, but also is a way of life that says that everyone can coexist in different
modes of living, and these modes can evolve over the course of a person’s life.
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Raphaël Liogier is a professor at the Institut d’Études Politiques of Aix-en-Provence, where he
teaches sociology and anthropology. He is the author of numerous articles and books, among
them L’évidence universelle (La Librairie de la Galerie, 2011) and Le mythe de l’islamisation
(Éditions du Seuil, 2012). He has contributed to De l’humain, nature et artifices (Actes Sud,
2010) and the Dictionary of Transnational History (London, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008) and has
lectured extensively. He is the director of the Observatoire du religieux.
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INDEX OF TITLES AND AUTHORS
A General Theory of Victimhood .............. 26
Altrad, Mohed ........................................... 8
André, Christophe................................... 30
Annah’s Promise ......................................... 8
Arditi, Metin .............................................. 8
Avenue of the Giants ................................. 12
Berthe Morisot: The Secret of the Woman in
Black ....................................................... 4
Bona, Dominique ....................................... 4
Care of the Self and Consciousness of the
World: The Globalization of Beliefs, The
............................................................... 32
Cupids Must Be Crazy, The ...................... 11
Curiol, Céline........................................... 10
Dorny, Jenny ........................................... 11
Dugain, Marc ........................................... 12
Eliard, Astrid ........................................... 13
Feel Better ................................................. 19
Flowers in Concrete .................................. 17
Gervais, Pierre......................................... 24
God............................................................ 29
I’m Not Done Looking at the World ......... 21
Influence of the Smell of Warm Croissants
on Human Kindness and Other Questions
of Experimental Moral Philosophy, The 27
Intensity of Stones, The ............................. 10
Jerusalmy, Raphaël................................. 14
Laruelle, François ................................... 26
Lenoir, Frédéric ...................................... 29
Liogier, Raphaël ...................................... 32
Louise’s Upsetting Life ............................. 20
Martinez, Cyrille ..................................... 15
Mazery, Bénédicte des ............................ 15
Meditating Every Day ............................... 30
Message, Vincent ..................................... 16
N’Sondé, Wilfried ................................... 17
Nightfall .................................................... 18
Ogien, Ruwen .......................................... 27
Patellière, Julie de la ............................... 18
Peretz, Pauline ......................................... 24
Prince of the Orchestra, The ....................... 8
Roger, Marie-Sabine ............................... 19
Royer, Corinne ........................................ 20
Sacrée Marie ............................................ 13
Saving Mozart ........................................... 14
Secret File of the Dreyfus Affair, The ....... 24
Shadow of a Man ...................................... 15
Silence of a Clearing, The......................... 22
Sleepworker, The....................................... 15
Stutin, Pierre ........................................... 24
Such a Pretty Little War ............................ 23
Thomas, David......................................... 21
Truong, Marcelino .................................. 23
Vilmer, Jean-Baptiste Jeangène .............. 6
War in the Name of Humanity: To Kill or
Let Die ..................................................... 6
Watchers, The ........................................... 16
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