L'Homme incendié (The Man in flames) - During the seven days which preceding his ordeal, the thinker Giordano Bruno writes a memoir in which he describes his doctrine, and his life marked by an assumed homosexuality. The English translation of this novel by Lis Nash has been nominated in the Times Litterary Supplement as one of the ten best books of the year by the literary critic Tariq Ali.
Comœdia - Gobbio is a being endowed – or hampered – by a miraculous power which keeps him for finding love. In the Quotidien des Livres, Alain Bosquet presents this 'angel’s story' as a 'claim for gender mixing'! And he goes on: 'Comœdia is written in a cheerful style with a insatiable appetite. For the character of Gobbio, whatever contradictory and evasive he may be, never dispenses with a true interiority.'
Le Roi de Sicile - Pier Angelerio, an hermit became pope under the name of Celestine V, made himself famous by voluntarily renouncing his office after six months of reign. As a cubist fresco on the theme of power, this story looks back at millennialism and a ‘happy age’ that could come. One might see it as a politic allegory about the 90’: the utopia devoured by cynicism. So is the conclusion of Jean-Philippe Catinchi in the Monde des Livres: ‘The lesson of Filippini’s saint hermit remains wise : giving up is the only act of courage.'
Un Amour de Paul - In Rome, a screenwriter is taking over a project that the late Pier Paolo Pasolini had in his mind: write the script for a film about the life of Saint Paul. At the abbey of Tre Fontane, at the very place where the apostle went through his ordeal, he meets an actress, Eden Pym, who follows a spiritual path.
Deux Testaments - A young boy who throws his copy of the Torah into the fire at the moment when Hitler triggers the extermination of the Jews of Europe. His story in the war and post-war. The book was chronicled for the Figaro Littéraire by Astrid de Larminat who writes: “Not enough to throw at 12 his Bible into the fire to get rid of the Most High; as Saint Augustine says, God flees those who seek Him and seeks those who flee Him.”
Le Combat des Trente - In 2100, geopolitical and environmental cataclysms have turned Paris into a forest occupied with ruined monuments and wild beasts. Commandés and Assassins challenge each other in the heart of a former thirteenth arrondissement. This chronicle of an Europe back to middle age revisits an episode of the Hundred Years War, the tournament between the fortresses of Josselin and Ploërmel.
Viola d'Amor - Written in the style of a 18th century narrative – the one of freedom! – this 'exercice de style' tells the erotic adventure of Tristano, who plays viola d'amore, and was sent to a village in the Italian Alps with a mission to accompany the last moments of a local tyrant.
Motifs - Collage of texts and images about the question that André Breton used as an incipit in his Nadja: “Who am I?”
Rimbaldo - In 1880, in Aden, a group photo was taken on the terrace of the Hôtel de l'Univers. One of the characters appearing on the picture is none other than the poet Arthur Rimbaud – the poet or ex-poet since he gave up writing to seek his fortune in Abyssinia.
J'aimerai André Breton - In September 1966, the surrealist writer André Breton ends his summer vacation in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, when he receives a visit from a young woman named Chance. As a person who flees the male domination, she will make of her meeting with the ‘pope’ of surrealism the first step on the path to a mystic conversion. For Mohammed Aissaoui (Le Figaro Littéraire), ‘one understand, or would like to understand, that sacred, mystic and solitude are roads to freedom’.