While everything seems to be going to hell, here are a few books from yesterday and today to help us, that is to say, to teach us the essentials and give us courage.
To Resist Injunctions: After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz
An OLNI (Unidentified Book Object) as we love them. The young American Selby Wynn Schwartz takes us into the whirlwind of the avant-garde and feminism of a pivotal moment in modernity through the lives of those who made it. From fragment to fragment, we go from Virginia Woolf to Natalie Barney, from Renée Vivien to Vita Sackville-West, from Radclyffe Hall to Romaine Brooks. Artists, writers, straight or gay, centuries after the poet Sappho, they gave a huge kick to the norms and other limits hitherto imposed on women.
Because we need (real) literature: The Lover by Marguerite Duras
An anniversary reissue of one of the greatest French novels, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Prix Goncourt awarded to her in 1984 , with interviews with Marguerite Duras from 1984 and facsimiles of the manuscript of The Lover . To remember how strong and revolutionary Duras’ writing was, even though she was mocked or ridiculed all her life. And how the Prix Goncourt could, sometimes, choose literature and not just the political message of the subject. A love story set against the backdrop of Indochina, and family violence, with harsh, sensual, brutal writing.
Because we can’t stand a whole system any longer: Thus the animal and us by Kaoutar Harchi (Actes Sud)
One of the most powerful books I have read this year, establishes a correspondence, even a cause-and-effect relationship, between the way our society treats animals and the way it treats women, racialized people, and colonized peoples. A text that everyone should read, urgently. Kaoutar Harchi received the 2024 Les Inrockuptibles prize for best essay.
Not to be fooled: On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
For those with amnesia, for those who have forgotten History or think that it will be different, this little book published seven years ago, subtitled Twenty Lessons of the 20th Century, is a bible to avoid being fooled by what is happening in France at the moment, or in the United States. And to face it.
To understand the horror and do everything to prevent it from happening again: The Convoy of Béata Umubyeyi Mairesse
The slap of the year. At fifteen, hidden with her mother in a humanitarian convoy that only transported children, Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse survived the Rwandan genocide. As this year marks the thirtieth anniversary of this genocide perpetrated by the Hutus against the Tutsis, she signs this astonishing text. A mixture of investigation, memoir, story, and essay, to reconstruct the tragedy that took place, and what role each person played in the destruction or in the rescue of human beings.
Because we must also cultivate our garden : Montaigne’s Essays
Because he had the luxury of locking himself away in a tower, which we would like, more than ever, to be able to do; he did it with his books, his mind, his universe, and to give birth to a monumental sum of thoughts, a treatise on philosophy and morality, which we need more than ever.
Because we must learn to die: What is your torment by Sigrid Nunez (Le livre de poche).
To read to prepare for the release of the film that Pedro Almodóvar made from it, The Room Next Door, in theaters in January, but also and above all because it is a magnificent text. A woman visits a friend she has lost touch with in the hospital. Suffering from terminal cancer, she will ask her to help her die. It is a compelling book on friendship, the complexity of life, the denial of death while it awaits us all, and the right to die with dignity. This paperback version will not be released until January, so we can wait before offering it, or offer the large format published by Stock in 2023.
Because what matters is love: The open sky by Nicolas Mathieu
Love taken in time. Because that’s all that matters, deep down: the love that we feel, that we live, that we give, in such a short time, our passage on earth, the only thing that can open heaven to us. Magnificent.
To complete your selection of books to give for Christmas, discover the 25 best books of 2014, selected by Les Inrocks. You can also take an interest in young authors influenced by their elders, or those who take on “popular” genres. You can also read the interview with Marie Ndiaye, the writer struggling with the world, or the review of her latest novel, O nuit, ô mes yeux. Finally, discover stylized reading, a trend that consists of reading a book while dressing like its main character.
