When the “old” resist. We thought they were forever relegated to the attics of bookstores, but no, they are there, in our Top 30, the novelists who have long passed retirement age. Cormac McCarthy (The passenger), 89 years old, Bernhard Schlink (The girl), 78 years old, Pierre Michon (The Two Beunes), 78 spring also, Erri De Luca (Full-scale), 72 years old, Pierre Lemaitre (Silence and Anger)71 years old, Yasmina Khadra (The Virtuous), 68 years old… not to mention the “ghosts” Julien Gracq and MC Beaton, who would be 112 and 86 years old respectively today. A presence all the more pleasing as, behind them, the young guard (Sarah Rivens, Mélissa Da Costa, Aurélie Valognes) is pushing hard and the fifty-year-olds (Giuliano da Empoli, Gaëlle Nohant, Michel Bussi or even Bret Easton Ellis) do not have no intention of erasing themselves from the picture. Moralities? The writing could well preserve, while the inspiration and the energy do not necessarily spin with the years.
3745_palmares
© / The Express
Tsunami
By Marc Dugain
After The influencehere is a new “political” novel from the author of The Officers’ Room. Dugain slips easily into the skin of the next President of the Republic. The atmosphere there is not much calmer than nowadays: low blows within the Elysée, domination of new technologies, tense international relations, shaken relations between men and women…
Tsunami
© / Albin Michael
In the beginning was war
By Alain Bauer
The media love it. It must be said that this professor of criminology at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts is a good client. And that the international situation lends itself to listening to this specialist in conflicts and the secret services, and to reading him. His analysis of the consequences of the war in Ukraine (a world without peace, alternating wars and truces) is torn off in bookstores.
In the beginning was war By Alain Bauer
© / Fayard
Germany
Melody
Von Martin Suter
The fifteenth novel by the Zurich native, released on March 22, has received praise from the entire German-language press and tops the list of bestsellers in the Spiegel. The author of Small World and To cookwith his pen still as alert despite his 75 years, takes the reader into the past of a former national councilor, who cannot forget the disappearance, more than forty years ago, of his then bride, Melody.