Novelist, short story writer and playwright born in 1972, Laurent Gaudé is an integral part of the French literary panorama of the 21st century. His work, translated worldwide, is published by Actes Sud. He is notably the author of The Death of King Tsongor (2002, Goncourt High School Students Prize, Booksellers Prize), The Sun of the Scortas (2004, Goncourt Prize, Jean-Giono Prize), Eldorado (2006), Listen to our defeats (2016) and Saltine. The three exiles (2018).
“It is in a dark room, on the third floor of a busy nightclub in the RedQ district, that Zem Sparak spends most of his nights. There, thanks to the visions provided by Okios technology, as addictive as opium, he can finally find the Athens of his youth. But his country has long since ceased to exist. Now an expatriate, Zem is no more than a vulgar “dog”, a downgraded policeman searching Zone 3 of Magnapole in acid rain and searing heat.
One morning, in this neighborhood abandoned to its misery, a body found open along the sternum will break the renunciation in which Zem has long entrenched himself. Placed under the tutelage of an ambitious inspector from zone 2, he embarks on a long investigation. Somewhere, he knows, a truth remains. But everywhere, at GoldTex, a powerful consortium that subjugates bankrupt countries, there is cynicism and violence. However, long before everything died, Zem experienced in Greece the urgency of revolt and the hope of an uncompromising future. He liked. And betrayed.
Under the furious skies of a privatized megalopolis, “Chien 51” echoes our disturbing world, both threatening and threatened. But this novel also shelters the ardent memory of what was, to be transmitted for tomorrow, as a last bastion to our postmodernity. (Presentation of Editions Actes Sud)