London Book Fair 2020 Rights’Listlesteragency.free.fr/page8/files/Libella_LBF 20.pdf · in the...

London Book Fair 2020

Rights’List

www.libellagroup.com

Antoinette Rychner ........................ 5Après le monde (After the World)

Aurélien Delsaux ............................ 6Pour Luky (For Luky)

Michel Serfati ................................ 7L’Enfant de la colère (The Child of

Anger)

Julien Thèves .................................. 8Les rues bleues (Blue Streets)

Teodoro Gilabert ............................ 9Resurrection Song (Resurrection

Song)

Anne Lauricella .............................10Tout ce qu’elle croit (Everything she

believes)

Stéphanie Chaillou ........................11Un jour d’été que rien ne distinguait

(One Summer day that seemed like any other)

Valérie Clo ....................................12Une vie et des poussières (A Life and

Change)

Paul Moracchini ............................13Aotéa (Aotea)

Marie-Aimée Lebreton ..................14Jacques et la corvée de bois (Jacques

and the Wood Chore)

Christian Chavassieux ...................15Noir canicule (Heat Wave Noir)

JM Erre ........................................16Le Bonheur est au fond du couloir à

gauche (Happiness is down the hall on the left)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FRENCH CONTEMPORARY FICTION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Sylvie Brunel ................................19Comment les paysans vont changer le

monde ? (How will Farmers change the world ?)

Anne-France Dautheville ..............20Miscellanées des fleurs (Miscellany of

Flowers)

Jean-Michel Molkhou ...................22Les Grands Quatuors à cordes

du xxe siècle (The Great Quartets of the xxth century)

Julia Kristeva ................................24Dostoïevski (Dostoyevsky)

Alain Labbé .................................25Le bateau-fraise (The Strawberry

Boat)

Vincent Noce ...............................27L’Affaire Ruffini. Enquête sur le

plus grand mystère du marché de l’art (The Ruffini Affair : an investigation into the Art Market’s Greatest History)

Eric Salobir ..................................28Dieu & la Silicon Valley (God and

Silicon Valley)

NON FICTIONEnvironment

Music

Literary non-fiction

Current Affairs

FRENCH FICTION

5

November 2022: An unprecedentedly powerful tornado ravages the west coast of the United States. Unable to pay off all the claims, America’s biggest insurance companies go bank-rupt, bringing the American financial system down with them, and eventually the whole

world’s. No more money, no more energy grid, no more communication network, a series of climate catastrophes… In a few short months, the world, as we know it, disappears.

Antoinette Rychner drew on “collapsology” theory to compose her novel, which switches between the adventures of a group of people trying to survive in a society that has been condemned to invent-ing a new logic, often at the price of barbarity; and the “epic,” a multi-authored poem woven by two women that retraces – in the first person plural – the events that led to and have followed in the wake of the catastrophe. Is humanism the prerogative of well-functioning societies only? Or is it possible in the midst of chaos and disaster to invent new ways to live in the world and to get along with each other?

In brief: 2022: After a climate catastrophe in the United States, the American financial system collapses, taking the whole of industrialized civilization down with it in just a few short months. A “collapsology” novel that, although it is bleak, resists despair, as it follows a group of characters in their frantic attempts both to survive and to reinvent themselves.

About the author: Antoinette Rychner was born in 1979 in Switzerland. Her first novel, Le Prix, published in 2015 by Buchet Chastel, won both the Michel-Dentan prize and the Swiss Literature Grand Prize, the two most important literary awards in French-speaking Switzerland. But she is best-known for her work in the theatre, for which she has been writing and directing for decades.

Spanish and German translation rights under option

APRÈS LE MONDE(After the World)

Antoinette Rychner

Worldwide translation rights: Libella (Buchet Chastel)Number of pages: 288Retail price: 18 €Publication date: January 3rd 2020Available material: Finished copy

6

Aurélien Delsaux describes a year in the life of Luky, Abdul and Diego, three teenaged boys who live in projects on the outskirts of a provincial town, three melancholy young man who yearn to live life fully, and who bear the huge weight of the future spread out before them. We

can guess at their fears as we see their hearts shriveling secretly towards a corner of their childhood that they cling to stubbornly.

Pour Luky is a novel about real friendship, about brothers by choice. It talks about vocations, diversity, the end of illusions, and the uproar of life that makes our heads spin, but also inspires great expectations. Between the lines, the novel also portrays the city, social differences and injustice. Warm-hearted and moving.

In brief: Nothing fancy, just a year in the life of three ordinary teenagers who have to decide what kind of school to go to. Providing un-clichéd portraits of its characters, Pour Luky also talks about the meaning of a vocation – those yearnings we feel inside us, not to be something or to do something, but to live and to learn.

About the author: Aurélien Delsaux was born in 1981. He taught in middle schools and high schools for 10 years. His critically acclaimed first novel, Madame Diogène, won several prizes, and, in Italy, it was shortlisted for Bari University’s Murat Prize. His second novel, Sangliers (Wild Boars), published in 2017 by Albin Michel, won the Société des Gens de Lettres’ Révélation Prize.

POUR LUKY(For Luky)

Aurélien Delsaux

Worldwide translation rights: Notabilia (Noir sur Blanc)Number of pages: 288Retail price: 18 €Publication date: January 3rd 2020Available material: Finished copy

7

Nadia grew up without a father. When she turns 18, her mother informs her that his name was Nâzim, and that he was a Turkish immigrant in France. A member of a radical-left group, he died during an attack on a bank. Deeply affected by those revelations, Nadia

decides to try to find out more about her father’s life. She gets in touch with his former comrades, many of whom have spent time in jail. That’s how she finds out about Anne, the great love of Nâzim’s life. Living in exile in Turkey in order to escape prosecution in France, she is waiting for the status of limitations on her case to expire. Nadia goes to meet her in Istanbul. But just four days before her slate will be wiped clean, Anne is arrested during a last-ditch operation by the French Ministry of the Interior and thrown in jail. Nadia, who has gone back to France, wants to help her, but doesn’t know how.

In brief: Nadia grew up without a father. When she turns 18, her mother informs her that he was a Turkish immigrant in France. A member of a radical-left group, he died during an attack on a bank in 1983. In order to get a better sense of who he was, Nadia tracks down his former comrades, both in France and in Turkey.

About the author: Born in Belfort in 1953, Michel Serfati has been a factory worker, a special-needs teaching aide, and an administrator in an institution for the disabled. His novel, Finir la guerre (Ending the War), won the 2015 First Novel Prize at Chambéry.

L’ENFANT DE LA COLÈRE(The Child Of Anger)

Michel Serfati

Worldwide translation rights: Libella (Phébus)Number of pages: 240Retail price: 19 €Publication date: January 3rd 2020Available material: Finished copy

8

1989 A young man flees the suffocating cocoon of family life in the toxically provincial town where he grew up and heads for the big city – Gay Pa-ree. There he falls madly in love and can finally be himself: a nocturnal

creature, a gay activist, and a free man.

Telling the tale both of a young man’s coming-of-age, and of his explorations of Paris, a fascinating city bursting with both history and stories. A city that changes as time goes by, yet somehow stays profoundly the same. Like the narrator, the capital is a full-fledged character in the book.

Blue Streets also relates several decades of France’s `history. From the end of the post-war boom to massive unemployment, the AIDS crisis, and the evolution of the family structure; as well as terrorism, environmentalism and hyper-consumerism.

In brief: A poetic text about a city’s power of seduction, and about society’s evolution and the passing of time.

About the author: Julien Thèves was born in Strasbourg in 1972. He works in communication, in both publishing and radio, and has contributed to M, le Magazine du Monde. His texts have been read on stage, adapted for film, and presented as radio plays on France Culture. His previous novel, Le Pays d’où l’on ne revient jamais (The Land of No Return), won the Marguerite Duras Prize.

LES RUES BLEUES(Blue Streets)

Julien Thèves

Worldwide translation rights: Libella (Buchet Chastel)Number of pages: 256Retail price: 16 €Publication date: January 16th 2020Available material: Finished copy

9

The renowned reggae singer, who was declared dead in 1981, has been seen on Tiananmen Square, surfing in Australia, on Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, and elsewhere. After a peri-od of doubt, the Church finally confirms the miracle: Bob Marley has risen from the dead.

But the Holy See is alarmed. Will the Rastaman become the new messiah? The Messiah? What would the consequences for traditional religions be? Especially Catholicism, which is on the wane in many countries, while dead or alive, Bob Marley, is as popular and charismatic as ever?

Nadia, a history student, has seen Bob Marley, too. She met him at a jazz concert in Marseille. They could have had an idyllic relationship if the Rastaman weren’t always appearing and disappearing unpredictably. But falling in love with the Messiah – Nadia hasn’t got the shadow of a doubt about her lover’s divine nature – was never going to be easy. Nadia, a strong-minded woman with a stunning body, urges Bob to give meaning to his resurrection. Is a new world about to emerge?

In brief: Bob Marley, the world-famous singer world and spokesman for the oppressed everywhere, has been reborn. Will the miracle finally provide humanity the opportunity for a second chance?

About the author: Teodoro Gilabert, geographer and contemporary-art lover, lives in Pornic, Brittany (France). This is the fourth novel published by Buchet Chastel after Les pages roses, L’Amer orange and La Belle Mauve.

RESURRECTION SONG(Resurrection Song)

Teodoro Gilabert

Worldwide translation rights: Libella (Buchet Chastel)Number of pages: 192Retail price: 16 €Publication date: February 6th, 2020Available material: finished copy

10

At first, the portrait of the family is idyllic. But cracks soon begin to appear. The omnipotent and omnipresent father rules every detail of the lives of his wife and two children, especially his darling daughter, whose only goal in life is to deserve his love. She “never stumbles,” on

her “path to perfection.”

Until the day when, as an older teen, she realizes that his stranglehold over her life might be toxic. And that it contains a danger that threatens her moral and physical integrity, and perhaps her very existence.Told elliptically and with restraint, Everything She Believes is the story of a woman’s healing after years of being subjected to incest within the framework of a supposedly “perfect” family. The powerful and subtle writing is magnificently suited to this portrait of a determined woman who draws on music and art, as well her own inner resources, to find the strength to reinvent herself.

In brief: This first novel portrays with both subtlety and insight the life of a little girl living under the sway of a father she believes is perfect. As a woman, she decides to deconstruct those lies, sifting through her childhood memories page after page in an attempt both to understand and to find the strength she needs to heal herself after suffering the abuse of incest.

About the author: Writer, poet and children’s-book author, Anne Lauricella lives just outside of Paris. She has had over a dozen books published, essentially children’s books and poetry collections. Everything She Believes is her first novel.

TOUT CE QU’ELLE CROIT(Everything she believes)

Anne Lauricella

Worldwide translation rights: Libella (Buchet Chastel)Number of pages: 304Retail price: 18 €Publication date: February 6th 2020Available material: Finished copy

11

France, the early 1960s: Louise is born into a family of debt-ridden farmers. It is a harsh, mis-erable life that offers no choices. But from as far back as she can remember, Louise has always known this: she will never accept her situation or the domination that she sees imposed on

the people around her. Her conviction is only strengthened when she starts school, where she realizes that as a girl, her life is more restricted than the boys’, and again later, by the view of high-school girls playing dumb and losing themselves in hopes of pleasing men, rather than themselves.

There’s nothing to be done: something inside of her refuses to negotiate. She simply won’t accept it. She will be neither poor, nor sad, nor resigned. Knowing that, she categorically refuses the role to which she has been assigned as a woman, categorically refusing to be confined to the domestic sphere, to be corseted by a need to be seductive or to exist only in men’s gaze.

In brief: In late 1970s France, a freedom-loving young woman refuses to accept the straitjacketed role to which she has been assigned. She throws herself headlong into her studies, discovers sex, and cultivates her uniqueness… until that fateful Summer Day that Seemed Like Any Other.

About the author: Stephanie Chaillou was born in 1969. Between 2008 and 2011, she published three books of contemporary poetry. In 2015, her first novel, L’Homme incertain (The Uncertain Man), was chosen for the RTBF Prix Première and the FNAC fall literary season, as well as being adapted as a play called Le Père (The Father). Her second novel, Alice ou le choix des armes (Alice or the Choice of Weapons) was published in 2016. In 2018, Notabilia published Le Bruit du monde (The Fury of the World).

UN JOUR D’ÉTÉ QUE RIEN NE DISTINGUAIT(One Summer day that seemed like any other)

Stéphanie Chaillou

Worldwide translation rights: Noir sur Blanc (Notabilia)Number of pages: 144Retail price: 14 €Publication date: March 5th 2020Available material: Finished copy

12

Mathilde is getting on in age, and she’s forgetting all sorts of things. So her daughter decides she’d be better off in assisted living than at home. Arriving in that new world, Mathilde, who used to be a journalist, starts a diary, A Life and Change.

She uses it to commits old memories to paper: her war-torn childhood, losing her father, fleeing to the free zone, losing her mother, being hidden by a farming family. Returning home to find everything in ruins.But Mathilde also describes her daily life in the strange world of assisted living. Her roommate who has lost her mind; her colorful and fairly life-battered tablemates; the care-givers – especially Maryline, who is a ray of sunshine. The days slip by: some are good, others, bad. It is a time for taking stock and for adjusting to a radical kind of solitude. A true life lesson, A Life and Change portrays a place, an assisted-living facility that most of us would rather not think about.

In brief: Daily life in an assisted-living facility, described with tenderness and insight by one of the residents. A magnificent, multifaceted portrait of several women.

About the author: Valérie Clo lives near Paris. This is her fourth novel published by Buchet Chastel after Plein soleil, Les Gosses and La Tyrannie des apparences.

UNE VIE ET DES POUSSIÈRES(A Life and Change)

Valérie Clo

Worldwide translation rights: Libella (Buchet Chastel)Number of pages: 240Retail price: 17 €Publication date: March 5th, 2020Available material: Finished copy

13

2010 Three old friends get together in a mansion in New Zealand. Despite the differences in their personalities, Justin, Bradley and Joshua have remained close thanks to their shared interests. Friendship is at the heart of this story.

But earlier that year, Bradley murdered his ex, Cassandra, during an argument about their son. He has managed to keep it secret for several months: through various ploys, he creates the impression that she’s gone missing but is still alive. Yet the missing-person bulletin looms over the mansion like a curse, an ultimatum that destabilizes everything and feeds a sense of emergency. The tension eventually gets the better of the ties that bind the three men. Each of them begins to sink into their own personal neuroses.As in La Fuite (The Flight), the author’s first novel, a direct connection with nature shines through every line. Nature inflects the intertwined fates of these disenchanted characters, letting them live or destroying them.

In brief: New Zealand: in a mansion undergoing renovation, three old friends get together for the summer. One of them has murdered his wife, but manages to convince the others that she’s still alive. But as the tale unfolds, doubts and suspicion get the upper hand.

About the author: Winner of the 2015 Prix Young Writer’s Prize, Paul Moracchini divides his time between Corsica and Nice. He is a professional singer-songwriter. In 2017 Buchet Chastel published his first novel, La Fuite.

AOTEA(Aotea)

Paul Moracchini

Worldwide translation rights: Libella (Buchet Chastel)Number of pages: 288Retail price: 18 €Publication date: March 5th 2020Available material: Finished copy

14

Jacques is a conscript in the 35th regiment, one of those young men sent to Algeria in 1959-1960 to – or so he was told – participate in a late phase of the war, learn the ropes, and become a real man. He has no choice but to leave both his father, and above all, his sweetheart, Jeanne, behind.

In Algeria, Jacques will reconnect with a childhood friend, François, a self-assured young officer. But the longer the war stretches on, the less Jacques feels like he knows his old friend.

This novella adapts the rhythm and poetical style of a legend, the better to show us the inanity of the Algerian War, into which young French men were drafted against their will. Page after page, we see Jacques, a conscript, lose his illusions until he no longer has the slightest hope to cling to.

In brief: After Cent sept ans (One Hundered and Seven Years, winner of the Alain-Fournier Prize), Marie-Aimée Lebreton returns to the Algerian War, this time to explore the fate of French soldiers caught up in a conflict they neither understand nor care about. A luminous book that reads like a legend.

About the author: Marie-Aimée Lebreton was born in Bouïra, in Kabylie (Algeria), in 1962.With a Ph.D. in art and a degree from the National Music Conservatory of Paris, she is an associate professor at Lorraine University and lives in Paris. Her first novel, Cent sept ans (One Hundered and Seven Years), came out in 2014.

JACQUES ET LA CORVÉE DE BOIS(Jacques and the Wood Chore)

Marie-Aimée Lebreton


15

2003 a heat wave has settled over all of Europe. The authorities have yet to realize just how catastrophically extreme this weather event really is. For Lily, it’s the first day of an apocalyptic new era.

Lily is a cab-driver; her passengers in the suffocating heat are a couple of elderly farmers. The man seems to be dying. He’s counting on seeing a faith healer in Cannes. It’s surely his last chance. But Lily is distracted. Her mind is on her older daughter, Jessica, a teenager who is going through her first crushes… and her first heartbreak. She’s also thinking about her ex-husband, Nicolas, who left her for a younger woman, Mélanie, whose dead body is in the trunk of the cab. Lily’s plan is to toss the body at a dump as soon as she has dropped her passengers off. As the stench of decay rises, each of the characters plays their role, full of love and violence.

In brief: Summer 2003, the heat wave is raging. Lily is a cabdriver. In the suffocating heat, she is driving a couple of elderly farmers, and is planning to get rid of a cumbersome package in the trunk of her car after she drops them off. As the tale progresses, the plot thickens, weaving a tight web of violent love stories. Christian Chavassieux offers readers a stunningly noir novel.

About the author: Christian Chavassieux was born in 1960 near Roanne. Although novel-writing remains his main occupation, he also delves into a wide range of other forms, including plays, short stories, essays, blogging, poetry and art criticism. For him, writing is a way of engaging with the world. In 2014, Phébus published his novel L’Affaire des vivants and in 2017, La vie volée de Martin Sourire which both received a great critical success.

NOIR CANICULE(Heat Wave Noir)

Christian Chavassieux

Worldwide translation rights: Libella (Phébus)Number of pages: 192Retail price: 17 €Publication date: March 5th 2020Available material: Finished copy

16

Michel is crazy about Bérénice, the love of his life for nearly three whole weeks now. But one morning, she unexpectedly leaves him. Tranquillizer-dependent Michel gives himself 12 hours to win her back with the recipes for happiness he finds in the positive-psychol-

ogy books she left behind.

Michel, who is prone to depression and finds hope in Michel Houellebecq’s books, decides to take up the greatest challenge of his life: winning her back. His only weapons? The recipes for happiness in Bérénice’s collection of positive-psychology books.We might as well admit it from the get-go: it ain’t gonna’ be easy!

In brief: Happiness Is Down the Hall on the Left is a droll yet desperate search for happiness over a backdrop of contemporary urban despair, the collapse of the western world, the failure of ideologies, the masculinity crisis, the climate crisis, and the Nutella crisis.

About the author: J.M. Erre is a teacher in Sète. From the start, all of his novels have been published by Buchet Chastel. Several of them have been translated into different languages and Le Mystère Sherlock is being adapted as a film in France at the moment.

Backlist: Translation rights sold to: China (Shanghai Translation Publishing), Italy (Clichy Edizioni), Russia (Inostranka), Japan (Kindai Bungei Sha) and Korea (Jaeum & Moeum)

LE BONHEUR EST AU FOND DU COULOIR À GAUCHE(Happiness is down the Hall on the left)

JM Erre

Worldwide translation rights: Libella (Buchet Chastel)Number of pages: 192Retail price: 15 €Publication date: April 2nd, 2020Available material: finished copy

NON FICTION

Environment

19

By 2050, we’ll need to produce a billion tons of cereal grains more each year in order to feed the Earth’s 10 billion projected inhabitants. Just when we thought we had conquered hunger, we realize that it hasn’t actually disappeared at all, and that it is still a tremendous threat. The

food-availability wars have already begun.

In order to respond to those challenges, agriculture will have to change radically. Digital and connected, it’s going to need to use the most advanced techniques and methods. The full range of models will be called upon: organic and sustainable alongside permaculture and industrial farms, heirloom seeds, livestock farming that takes the animals’ well-being into account, eating local and international exchanges, and more. The need to produce clean, safe and sustainable food while still remaining competitive is already bringing change to the countryside. Having entered a new realm of uncertainty and complexity, agriculture is constantly innovating and adapting. In this book, Sylvie Brunel describes the third agricultural revolution, one that must reconcile ecology and agronomy, economy and social justice, small farms and big firms.

In brief: There will be 10 billion people on Earth by the year 2050, but the food-availability wars have already begun. In order to respond to growing needs, the third agricultural revolution is bringing new, safer, healthier, more sustainable but still competitive food-production models. Sylvie Brunel proposes a powerful and incisive essay on the future of agriculture.

About the author: Professor of geography at the Sorbonne, Sylvie Brunel spent 17 years working for NGOs like Doctors without Borders and Action Against Hunger. Specialized in development, she is particularly focused on what’s at stake in food-safety issues.

POURQUOI LES PAYSANS VONT SAUVER LE MONDE ?(How will Farmers save the World?)

Sylvie Brunel

Worldwide translation rights: Libella (Buchet Chastel)Number of pages: 272Retail price: 19 €Publication date: February 13th 2020Available material: Finished copy

20

Do you know when the first flower appeared? Where does the frangipani shrub’s name come from? How do orchids attract bees? Why did Victoria regia, a giant water lily from the Ama-zon rainforest that is sturdy enough for a child to sit on become the star of the first World’s

Fair, in 1851? What legend hides behind an almond tree? What colors do flowers count on to attract pollinators?

This book contains nearly 250 articles, anecdotes, myths and legends about flowers. We learn about the existence of punishments for plants and naps for bees. We’ll run into Pliny the Elder, Malherbe, Arcimboldo, Darwin, Napoleon I, Cleopatra and others. We’ll find out what tubers, sepals and stigmas are.Ranging from serious to playful, scientific to practical, useful to frivolous – but always enchanting – these surprising stories are like an invitation on a journey, and can be dipped into at will. The stunning illustrations and lively layout make reading this book a real pleasure.

In brief: This anthology, a veritable cabinet of curiosity for flowers, contains nearly 250 anecdotes that range from serious to playful, scientific to practical, and useful to frivolous… but are always both enchanting and informative. Readers can skip from one interesting tidbit to the next, in any order they please.

About the author: Anne-France Dautheville is a journalist and a writer. She has traveled the world by motorcycle on her own: her travels and the information she gleans from gardeners everywhere she goes have inspired her articles and books. She is neither a botanist nor a scientist: her degree is in callouses and curiosity.

Polish translation rights under option

Backlist: translation rights sold to Germany (Kindler Verlag), China (Beijing University Press) and Poland (Wydawnictwo Literackie)

MISCELLANÉES DES FLEURS(Miscellanies of Flowers)

Anne-France Dautheville


Music series

22

Chamber music, surely the most refined of all musical forms, is unique in that it obliges those who perform it to develop teamwork, modesty, and an ability to share and to make concessions. A string quartet is the most sophisticated and well-balanced of them all, a kind

of intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual ideal for all concerned: the composer, the performers, and the audience.

Must a great quartet strive above all to blend its voices, to create the impression of a sixteen-stringed instrument, or should each instrument retain an individual identity? That is the question that each of the great ensembles presented in this book has answered in its own, singular way.

A CD containing over four hours of music and offering a panorama of over 50 different quartets comes with the book.

In brief: Jean-Michel Molkhou, a specialist on the topic, presents 120 great twentieth-century string quartets.

About the author: As a violinist since childhood, Jean-Michel Molkhou divides his time between his profession as a surgeon and his passion for music, particularly stringed instruments. A music critic for the magazine Diapason for over 30 years, he is also the author of the two-volume Les Grands Violonistes du XXe siècle, published by Buchet/Chastel.

Translation rights : Japanese rights under option

Worldwide translation rights: Libella (Buchet Chastel)Number of pages: 480Retail price: 27 €Publication date: January 16th 2020Available material: Finished copy

LES GRANDS QUATUORS À CORDES DU xxe SIÈCLE(The Great Quartets of the xxth Century)

Jean-Michel Molkhou

Literary non-fiction

24

In every reader’s life, there are certain authors who hold a special place. The “Authors of My Life” series invites today’s great writers to share their admiration for a literary classic. In a similar vein to Corrêa/Buchet Chastel’s “Immortal Pages” series from the 1930s and 40s, each volume is

composed of a presentation of the chosen author followed by a personal anthology.

“With his eyes riveted on the Bulgarian edition of The Idiot, my father sternly advises me not to read it: ‘Destructive, diabolical, and sticky. It’s over the top, you won’t like it, forget about it.’ His dream was for me to escape ‘The Bowels of Hell,’ as he referred to our native Bulgaria. In order to help make that desperate dream come true, the best thing was for me to develop my innate taste for clarity and freedom… in French, needless to say, since he had introduced me to the language of La Fontaine and Voltaire. I obviously disobeyed the paternal advice, as usual, and dove headfirst into Dosto. Awed, overwhelmed, swallowed up.”

In brief: Born in Bulgaria, Julia Kristeva was able to read Dostoyevsky’s work in the original Russian as a teenager. Having gone on to become one of the major European intellectual figures of our times, in this book, she provides a deep and stimulating analysis of an author who has influenced her life.

About the author: Bulgarian by birth, Julia Kristeva has lived in France for over 50 years. She is a writer, psychoanalyst, emeritus professor at Paris 7-Diderot University, and a full member of the Psychoanalytic Society of Paris. She has received honorary degrees from numerous universities in the USA, Canada, and Europe where she teaches regularly. In December 2004, she became the first winner of the Holberg Prize; she was awarded the Hannah Arendt Prize two years later, and the Vaclav Havel Prize in 2008. She has written nearly 30 books, all of which have been entirely translated into English.

DOSTOÏEVSKI

Julia Kristeva


25

For twelve years, Alain Labbé sailed, alone or as a crew member for captains like Eric Tabarly and Olivier de Kersauson. In 1999, he made a fresh start as a farmer, and began to grow strawberries in Plougastel (Brittany). In nearly two dozen short chapters, he describes his

daily life, made up of harvesting, selling at the market, economic worries, and gustatory delights, for a mouth-watering depiction of the constraints and pleasures of agriculture. Solitude bumps up against communal living, making it not unlike life on board at times. One is reminded of Sue Hubbell’s A Country Year or Dan O’Brien’s Buffalo for the Broken Heart. We can’t help savoring the descriptions of the plump red berry, while gradually coming to understand how a sailor could abandon the open seas for the rolling hills.

In brief: Alain Labbé was a sailor for 12 years. Now he is a strawberry farmer in Plougastel. In a similar vein to Sue Hubbell’s A Country Year, he describes his daily life as a farmer, made up of harvesting, selling fruit at the market, economic worries, and delightful tastes.

About the author: Alain Labbé set sail with Eric Tabarly in 1974. He spent 12 years sailing, both solo and as part of a crew, most notably with Olivier de Kersauson. After two round-the-world races and two Atlantic crossings, he settled down in 1999 to grow strawberries in Plougastel. The Strawberry Boat is his first book.

LE BATEAU-FRAISE(The Strawberry Boat)

Alain Labbé

Worldwide translation rights: Libella (Phébus)Number of pages: 256Retail price: 18 €Publication date: March 5th 2020Available material: Finished copy

Current affairs

27

Giuliano Ruffini, his son Mathieu, and Lino Frongia, a painter, are suspected by a French judge of having forged and sold dozens of “Old Masters” painting that have appeared over the past 30 years in Europe and America.

This book goes back over the four-year-long investigation, describing the paintings’ “adventures” around the world, shedding light on both the forgers’ technical ingenuity and the experts’ conflicting statements, and describing the colorful characters involved in this lucrative business. It also exposes a worrisome side of the art world, hamstrung by crooked dealings in which millions of dollars change hands before disappearing without a trace.Major institutions like New York’s Metropolitan Museum, the Getty, London’s National Gallery, the Louvre, Vienna’s Kunsthistoriches Museum and the National Gallery of Parma are all involved, albeit to different degrees. Sotheby’s, Christie’s in Paris, London and New York; prominent London-, Paris-, and Munich-based galleries; recognized experts throughout Europe and the USA are all embroiled in the largest scandal the art world has ever known.

In brief: The story of one of the largest art-market frauds in history, paired with a fascinating tour of the world of art experts and analytical laboratories. The case has already been tried in Great Britain and Italy and will soon get its day in court in France, too.

About the author: Vincent Noce was in charge of the art section for the French daily Libération for many years. He now works for the English monthly The Art Newspaper, whose investigations are recognized as authoritative around the world. Noce is also the author of Descentes aux enchères (Auction House Hell), which exposed the seamy practices of the renowned Parisian auction house Hôtel Drouot, and of La collection égoïste, which relates the fabulous adventures of the serial art theft Stéphane Breitwieser.

L’AFFAIRE RUFFINI. ENQUÊTE SUR LE PLUS GRAND MYSTÈRE DU MARCHÉ DE L’ART(The Ruffini Affair: an investigation into the Art’s Market Greatest History)

Vincent Noce


28

DIEU ET LA SILICON VALLEY(God and Silicon Valley)

Eric Salobir

On one side, we have the Vatican, the smallest country in the world, and one of the youngest, too, but one which is the home of the Holy See, the seat of a church with 1,313 billion members worldwide. On the other, Silicon Valley, whose 3 million inhabitants include 73

of the world’s 143 tech billionaires. The former is one of the oldest and largest political and spiritual authorities in the world. In just a half-century of existence, the latter has radically transformed the lives of billions of people – for better and for worse. Is it possible to build a bridge between those two worlds, with their drastically different temporalities? Between the demiurge entrepreneurs for whom the mysteries of life and death are above all a technological problem and a venerable institution that has reached a turning point in its millennia-old history?

In brief: Eric Salobir, Dominican friar and president of the think tank Optic, which places humanity at the heart of technological development, has long pondered and built a bridge between the stakes raised by the technological revolution and the need for greater ethical awareness in the face of the current explosion in technological progress.

About the author: After business school and a job at a bank, Eric Salobir joined the Dominican Order. His technological expertise and understanding of the financial stakes have enabled him to become the intermediary between two equally fascinating worlds: the Vatican and Silicon Valley.

Worldwide translation rights: Libella (Buchet Chastel)Number of pages: 288Retail price: 20 €Publication date: April 9th 2020Available material: Uncorrected bound proofs

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