Philippe Claudel. “The real enigma is human nature.”

Back Duska magnificent police mural that evokes the atmosphere of Bosch or Bruegel paintings, Philippe Claudel transports us to a snow-buried village on the border of the Empire, where the unsolved murder of a priest could ignite the dust. … And as a moralist meditate on the torments, drives and tragic futility of people, but also on their ability to create beauty in spite of everything.

Video: “The Super-8 Years” by Annie Erno and David Erno, excerpt

Miss Figaro. – Duskwith its wintry plot and spooky setting, it’s a tribute A king without fun By Jean Gionot?
Philippe Claudel. – I often quote the latter, as I often quote Durenmat or Simenon. They write less historical or detective novels than rely on despair and puzzle solving to delve into the human soul. The real puzzle is human nature. I love building winter novels, curling up in the text like a blanket in front of the fire.

Would you like to get back in touch too? Gray souls ?
Dusk comes out after only twenty years and I’m very attached to the birthday. We can indeed read it as a return to the queen of fiction, a romantic vehicle fueled by a series of characters and twists. But Dog Archipelago was also a romantic vehicle fueled by fables and mythology. I have always loved exploring the modern age using the timeless tools of story and legend. And I wanted to give myself time to get into the world, the characters, the weird questions, it takes place so far away and so long ago, like The Brodeck Report Where? Gray soulsbut what is at stake is the modern.

I was very marked by the war in the former Yugoslavia, where someone I knew died

Philippe Claudel

Into what, exactly?
We are often asked: “Why are you writing?” But the real question is “where are you writing from?” I write from today and from here, I am shaken by currents, business, accidents, and literature distills them, especially when it took nine years to write. Central theme DuskThis is how leaders rewrite, manipulate and reshape history, like Donald Trump and his “alternative truths” or Vladimir Putin.

Another topic is how we get rid of what bothers us…
Yes, whether it’s foreign as in Brodeck: , or, here, the community. I was very marked by the war in the former Yugoslavia, where someone I knew died. And where people living in harmony have, overnight, become enemies capable of the worst abuses. I wanted to mirror the communal tension and replicate the criminal sexual deviance of DSK or Harvey Weinstein through the temptations of Inspector Norio. Or to #MeToo and neofeminism through the heroines of the novel, who at first seem like secondary characters before we discover that they have actually taken their lives back into their own hands.