The movement was outlined in the shadow and amazement of Donald Trump’s first mandate between 2016 and 2020, he crystallized with the invasion of the Capitol in January 2021 and has not stopped since. For a long time, under the chairmanship of Barack Obama, the black American novel was very mostly specialized in the classic “serial killer” genre. Of course, there were exceptions, authors anxious to tell “their” America, but the social novel remained a minority.
From now on, the proposals of texts imbued with the country’s political atmosphere are multiplying. “Since the first election of Donald Trump, we have seen the southern United States arriving non-militant books, they do not directly denounce the American administration, but committed, they tell the consequences of this new deal,” confirms Arnaud Hofmarcher, editorial director of Sonatine. An already very sensitive trend in bookstores, which will be found in quays of the thriller, the festival of the black novel, in Lyon from April 4 to 6.
Classic police investigations in reality
Not all authors do not kiss the change in climate in the same way. Some use it to anchor their classic police investigations in reality, like a Michael Connelly. For thirty years, the novelist has been walking his hero Harry Bosch (and a few others) in the big episodes of recent history, from the riots of Los Angeles in 1992, the September 11 attacks until, in his latest novel Who knows how to wait (Calmann-Lévy), stage supporters of Trump who participated in the invasion of the Capitol.
Others tell their concerns more directly in the face of a world that dislocates. “The capture of the Capitol marked them a lot. In The omen by Peter Farris or 2034 From Elliot Ackerman, we feel this fear of fascism, the omnipresent fear of a civil war in a country where people no longer speak to each other. It is prior to Donald Trump but he blows on the embers, “confirms Oliver Gallmeister, founder of the house which made North American literature his trademark. With their capacity to integrate faster than French authors the jolts of history in their novels, they show the most man-manted America songs in the recent period.
After a large detour by the script and the historical novel, Dennis Lehane thus returned to a more political remarks, with Silence (Gallmeister). In this story of a mother wishing to avenge his daughter, he denounces social misery and returns to the racial history of Boston, his favorite city. In These women (Christian Bourgois), the novelist Ivy Pochoda stops on the disinterest aroused by the murders of several prostitutes via a fiction text which becomes a militant message. At the beginning of 2026, Eli Cranor, already the author of Ozarks dogs (Sonatine), will publish in France a novel around a Mexican immigrant working in an Arkansas factory. “It is almost a Marxist novel on working conditions, he says that the hero carries diapers because there is no break in the factory,” says Arnaud Hofmarcher.
How Obama disappointed an acquired electorate
For the French reader, some of these writings are also an opportunity to go against their received ideas on America today. In this register, special mention to ATRICA LOCKE with its It is long back to return (Liana Levi). We had loved his character to ranger Texan Noir in his previous novels, especially in BlueBird, BlueBird. We also liked in Pleasantville (Gallimard) His way of revealing the underside of the 1996 municipal election in Houston. She told the hope aroused by a color candidate who was likely to win, but also the first tears, this moment when the black community no longer voted only democrat, but was tempted by the Republicans. In her new novel, she starts from a fairly classic police frame, a black girl disappeared from the university where she was inscribed, to tell an America under Trumpist influence and how this man who seems irrational and so far from popular circles could have seduced them.
Without ever pouring into the demonstrative or the professor, the novelist relates the disappointment aroused by Barack Obama in this lower middle class which has kept hope born of his two mandates that the feeling of his impoverishment. A job loss, a sick child, debts, the street. “At that time, Obama took possession of the oval office and we were starting to talk about a health insurance project that would allow people like them to better resist the blows of fate, unpleasant surprises hidden in their DNA,” writes Atta Locke. But “it was with the Obamacare that we really hit the bottom,” said his heroes, the Fuller family. It does not matter that the Governor of Texas is responsible for this failure, the certainty is there: “Obama used us to be elected, but he did not let us straighten us, nor live in dignity as the white population. Once he succeeded, he made us believe that we, the blacks, we drew the system down.” Only a solution to this family, a new city built by an agrifood company where they find accommodation, school for children, medical center, library and health insurance and health insurance. They are permanently watched there and the head of the family is exploited there, but finally they can blow.
Joseph, the father, then recognizes himself “in the republican discourse according to which the Democrats despised the real workers”, he appears “in a sea of red caps” at the forefront of “what looked atrociously to a meeting of the 45th President of the United States”. At the Ranger who wonders: “Joseph Fuller, supporter of Donald Trump? Above as crazy as a pork who insists on driving the truck to the slaughterhouse”, the man retorts: “I like that a candidate comes to seek my vote. That he does not think it is in the pocket, that he does not take me high. I want a president who considers me a man, who respects my ideas Everything Donald Trump has promised.
In a completely different genre since it is a question of espionage, but just as exciting and informative on today’s America, Moscow X by David McCloskey (Seuil). After taking us with Damascus mission In the meanders of a Syrian regime now disappeared, but then confronted with the street revolt, the former CIA analyst takes us this time in the deaf war between the United States and Russia of Vladimir Putin. Or how the CIA strives to destabilize the regime by playing rivalries and quarrels between close to Putin around the “Khozyain” war treasure, the master. Even more than the intrigue, a bit complex in the first pages, it is the very documented character of the story of David McCloskey who fascinates. We discover the brutal methods inflicted on those who threaten Putin’s power, the ferocity of power struggles around the “master”, but also the CIA methods, just as devious and unlimited means. Elected by the Financial Times and the Sunday Times best thriller of the year 2024, Mission X Exit at a time when the situation seems to have changed between the United States and Russia. But is it so true?
.