This seasons’s selection will explore the theme of personal writing. This very intimate and multifarious literary genre stretches from biographies of famous or anonymous people to autobiographies,  yet all have in common to delve into the human mind and heart, revealing the inner traumas and secret thoughts of the characters. As they say, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. While revealing a vast panoply of human emotion, here is a selection of books that proves this adage.
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To begin with, a biography about Manuel Rodriguez Sanchez, also known as Manolete, a famous bullfighter who rose to stardom during the Spanish Civil War. Manolete, written by Anne Plantagenet, retraces the story of his calling, and the difficult path leading to celebrity. The complex personality of Manolete, who was both worshipped and hated, is scrutinized by Anne Plantagenet with insight and perceptiveness.

Next is a book about the renowned Russian author and leader of the Russian Revolution: Lenin. This imposing historical figure is the main character in Dominique Noguez’s latest opus entitled Lénine Dada. This book captures the remarkable story of how Lenine may have met the Dadaists in Zurich in 1916 and have been influenced by them. What could seem to be a joke at first is however a well-documented analysis of the possible similarities between Lenin’s political choices and the dadaist philosophy.

The following books deal with personal experience and dramas.

In Le cœur n’est pas un genou que l’on plie, Mariama Barry shares with the reader her experience as a teenager in the Republic of Guinea during the dictatorship of Sékou Touré, and later, her move to Senegal. A biography but also a critic against Guinea’s government and traditions of the time, this book is above all the bittersweet tale of a stolen childhood.

Le jour où Nina Simone a cessé de chanter written by Mohamed Kacimi, tells the story of Darina al Joundi, a very famous public figure in Lebanon: not only was she an actress, but also a scriptwriter and filmmaker. She inherited from her father –a journalist and a writer– a strong dose of idealism and an acute sense of freedom. But civil war is looming. She will grow up to become a woman and a rebel, and to discover the consequences of civil disobedience.

In the graphic novel Faire semblant c’est mentir, Dominique Goblet confronts a number of ghosts from her childhood and adulthood. She exorcizes her traumas by addressing her father’s drinking issues and her mother’s violence. It took the author twelve years to bring the exploration of her childhood to fruition. Mixing painting and drawing, this original work of art expresses with a moving immediacy the feelings of the author.

Pierre Guyotat, a famous figure on the contemporary French literary scene, presents us with two autobiographies entitled Formation and Coma, soon to be translated into English. The first one deals with his childhood, and the second one is the account of his artistic and spiritual crisis. This very personal and moving work is the story of a profound despair leading to an intellectual and physical coma. The urge of writing and the power of language act as a cathartic experience. The conciseness of his writing reveals Guyotat’s desire to share a painful moment of his life with the reader.
   
In 2005, Catherine Grenier offered Christian Boltanski to write his biography in the form of a dictated “confession”. They met almost each week for a year, for long sessions where she would record their conversations. These meetings, which Christian Boltanski quickly compared to a psychoanalysis, were based on precise rules: telling as much about his life as about his work, and avoiding any modification or censure. La vie possible de C. Boltanski is the result of this new kind of casual interview. Boltanski reveals his thoughts on the French artistic scene, his background and his influences as an artist.

Finally, this book by Marie Darrieussecq finds a special place in our selection. The narrator of Tom est mort reflects on the emotions that she has lived through during the ten years which followed her son’s death. She meticulously considers the ways in which her family and herself have mourned an abruptly ended life. Although this book is a novel, the narrator’s feelings are so well-observed and realistic that the universality of the topic soon becomes conspicuous.

We hope you will enjoy our selection.

Bonne lecture !

Fabrice Gabriel, Anne-Sophie Hermil, Mathilde Billaud, Claire Berget