A female trio on the side of fictions – L’Express

Make way for women! In this week from February 17 to 23, three novelists enter the fiction list. Azra Reed, remember this name. With nearly 100,000 copies (according to edistat) of the first volume of Valentinapublished by Hugo Roman in October 2024, this French novelist, known by the pseudonym Iamkunafa, made a remarkable entry into the world La Dark Romance. With volume II, just published and which assumes the first step of the podium of fictions, it would seem that its readers and followers- the lady is very active on social networks like Instagram and Tiktok- follow up on. In the first volume, the young Valentina tried to escape the violence of the cartels, and in volume II, it is the same …

Agnès Martin-Lugand, she has already made a name for himself for a long time, since 2013 exactly with her first novel, Happy people read and drink coffee. And today publishes his 12th novel, Renaissions (Michel Lafon). Pulled to 150,000 copies, he staged Rebecca, a novelist losing inspiration, and Lino, craftsman passionate about art history haunted by his past. They meet at the bistro, he tells himself and then disappears. Rebecca embarks on his traces, with the firm intention of making him the hero of his next novel … veterane of this trio of triumphant women, Marie-Bernadette Dupuy! French queen of family sagas (13 on the clock), she publishes the 4th and last volume of her series Albane under the title Hearts in turmoil (Calmann-Lévy). Where we find Albane, in June 1943, finally married to Raphaël, and who gathered in his castle an orphan…

And on the test side? Three men! While the Salomé Sacqué journalist continues her mad race at the top of the list with Resist (Payot), and its more than 190,000 copies sold since mid-October 2024, three new authors arise. Starting with the director Michel Hazanavicius, whose Ukraine notebooks (Allary ed.) Settle in 12th place. We said in the Express all the good that we thought of portraits and testimonies gleaned in the Donbass by the director of The Artist and The most precious goods. The book, whose profits will be paid to United24, tells this dive into what the author calls “the parallel world”. From Lviv to kyiv, from military checkpoints to Kramatorsk bars, Michel Hazanavicius walks the country. The soldiers entrust their daily lives to him, their faults and their sufferings in the face of a more numerous and better armed enemy, but also their determination to put an end to this existential war for them.

The second impetrant is Patrick Chamoiseau, who places What can literature when she can’t? (Threshold) in the 14th row. In his work, which fits into the Labelle collection, the famous Martinican writer, Goncourt Prize for Texaco (In 1992), questions literatures in their relationship with the world, especially those of the oppressed peoples: “Palestinians, Tibetans, Uighurs, Rohingyas, Tutsis, Kurdes, Ukrainians, Haitians, Syrians, Peoples-Nations erased in French Outremer” …

Finally, in 17th place, Quinn Slobodian appears with The capitalism of apocalypse. Or the dream of a world without democracy (Threshold). Quinn Slobodian is a specialist in the history of neoliberalism and professor of global economic and political history at the University of Boston. It is a world, composed of holes, asperities and gray areas (tax havens, frank ports, cities -states, closed enclaves and special economic zones) that Quinn Slobodian describes, launching in the footsteps of the most notable radical libertarians – from Milton Friedman to Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Summary of the publisher: “This masterful investigation leads us from Hong Kong in the 1970s to South Africa at the end of apartheid, from the southern United States to the city of London, from Dubai to Somalia at war, and even in the Metals, vertiginously revealing the terrifying progress of capitalism without democracy.”