Christophe Boltanski, Fritz Zorn and Jacky Schwarzmann: the books not to be missed

King Kasai

By Christophe Boltanski.

Stock, 160 pages, €18.50.

The rating of L’Express: 4/5

At the outlet of the royal park, former hunting ground of the Dukes of Brabant located in the chic suburbs of Brussels, suddenly, we see the Art Deco palace of Tervuren, imposing, grandiose. But to get there, you have to go a few dozen meters away through a cube of glass and steel leading to a long tunnel – the result of five years of work (2013-2018) and a “decolonization” enterprise. of the museum. It is this astonishing AfricaMuseum, former Royal Museum of Central Africa, that Christophe Boltanski has chosen to survey (for the collection “My night at the museum”) by the light of his mobile phone. An incongruous idea, born from the memory of a report made ten years ago in the Congo for the needs of a book on tin oxide, a mineral essential to the electronics industry. To understand the AfricaMuseum, you have to go back to the roots, to the Universal Exhibition of 1897, and to the desire of Leopold II, owner, in a personal capacity, of the Congo (“big as eighty times its flat country”) , to show the world a glimpse of its share of the “African cake” in the form of a pavilion and three “Negro villages”.

With In the heart of darkness, by Joseph Conrad under his arm and the Tintin albums (rich in racist clichés about Africa) in his head, here is our reporter in the large gallery, with his heterogeneous menagerie, lions, cheetahs, antelopes, buffaloes, jackals, etc. Boltanski does not lead off, especially since a camp bed has been set up for him near King Kasai. A disproportionate specimen, this stuffed elephant shot to order for another Universal Exhibition in Brussels, that of 1958. killed the pachyderm, his own way of continuing the “visionary work” of the “huge monarch”. Also roam the ghosts of the torturers, the explorer Stanley, who “shoots the Negroes as if they were monkeys”, Captain Léon Rom, collector of human skulls and all the collectors of this land rich in rubber. And we thank the author for having led us with enthusiasm and intelligence in this historical jungle.

March

By Fritz Zorn, trans. of German by Olivier Le Lay.

Gallimard, 320 pages, €22.

The rating of L’Express: 5/5

March is the only book by the young Swiss Fritz Zorn, and one of the most significant of the end of the last century (published posthumously in 1976). March is the story of a man confronted with evil, the cause of which, as Philippe Lançon writes so well in his preface, is “the prohibition of desire”. He suffers from cancer, but also, as a good son educated by wise and rich German Swiss unfit for any confidence and any sensual manifestation, of his non-revolt.

So, throughout his agony (Fritz died at the age of 32, in 1976), he let his anger spring from his angry pen. His “poor parents”, walled in their respectability, himself, incapable of cheering up, Zurich society, corseted… While he is re-reading March in this new translation, Philippe Lançon begins to reconsider the parents, whom he considers, today, fragile and worthy. Your turn to judge !

Pyongyang 1071

By Jacky Schwarzman.

Paulsen Paperback, 166 p., €8.50.

The rating of L’Express: 4/5

Created a year ago, the very pretty pocket collection from Paulsen editions continues on its merry way. After eight titles in 2022 drawn from the fund of the publisher of adventures and wide open spaces, here is the spring delivery with five works on philosophical walking, the trail spirit, Thomas Pesquet, an ascent of Mont Blanc and… the marathon North Korea annual.

It was in 2018, the author of thrillers Jacky Schwarzmann had the absurd idea to participate in this event organized in the charming dictatorship of Kim Jong-un. In Pyongyang 1071 (his bib number), the writer recounts with verve his journey via China to reach the Korean capital, the 42 kilometers of a surreal race (completed in four hours, three minutes and eight seconds), then his “tourist week “under the supervision of guides making it impossible to have any “contact with the natives”. Instructive and hilarious.