Throughout the pages of “The room of the devils”, the novelist Isabelle Duquesnoy delivers a historical thriller on the fate of Catherine Monvoisin known as La Voisin, famous poisoner whose trial sent shivers down the reign of Louis XIV.
It is a book that begins on the straw of a stake, and ends on that of a dungeon. We rub shoulders with the greatest ladies of the court of the Sun King, a perverse and abject priest, a few highly disreputable fishnets, and above all one of the greatest serial killers of the Grand Siècle: Catherine Monvoisin known as La Voisin, undoubtedly the most famous. accused of one of the most resounding trials of the reign of Louis XIV: the poisons affair.
It is the fate of this mistress-wife, midwife and abortionist, diviner, healer and poisoner, that Isabelle Duquesnoy tells us about – with her alert and earthy style – in one of those historical novels that read like thrillers. Between conspiracies, black masses and witchcraft, between the bubbling of retorts and the effervescence of the great ladies of the king’s court, one sniffs there with horror and often with delight a smell of sulfur and corpses, but – perhaps even worse – the pestilential scents of human abjection.
” Devils room ”, ofIsabelle Duquesnoy was published by Robert Laffont editions.
Reporting : After a first edition devoted to Bamako, it is the turn of the city of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, to be honored throughout the month of March in the Goutte d’Or district, in the 18th arrondissement. On the program: theatre, dance, concerts given by Rwandan artists. And even a parade! Our reporter Chloe Sitbon slipped behind the scenes during the preparations.