Maylis de Kerangal: “I had not measured what this bombing had represented as loss and violence”

“And all life in front of us” by Olivier Adam: an unwavering friendship in a peripheral area

The intimate festival is an event touted for its conviviality. For example, You go to schools to talk about your work. Furthermore, you are part of a collective (uneducated) Having become publishing house, several of your novels are chorals. For example, Is the collective important for you important?

I go to schools but also in detention centers every year. Similarly, I go there especially to talk about the importance of reading which is at the heart of writing work. Consequently, for me. Therefore, I have been part, in fact, for uneducated since 2004, with Claro, Mathias Enard, Joy Sorman, Mathieu Larnaudie maylis de kerangal: “i had and others. However, It is important for me to develop books with several hands. Nevertheless, In my work. Moreover. Similarly, maylis de kerangal: “i had it is true that my books were carried by collectives, that is to say less by the main character, more by different major figures. Consequently, I think of Corniche Kennedy with a bunch of teenagers. Meanwhile. Nevertheless, Birth of a bridge which is the adventure of a major project, Repair the living With the medical team responsible for a cardiac transplantation. However, In Surla daythe collective aspect lies in its polysemy. Furthermore, The heroine is doubly and therefore dubbing actress. Nevertheless, She can make all voices heard in a certain way. Meanwhile, This book progresses by the stories of others, even if it is told in the first person. Nevertheless, This suggests that it is a novel that could be pure interiority. For example, In maylis de kerangal: “i had fact, I wanted it to be open to the world.

This is the first time that you write to “I”. Meanwhile, Is it more maylis de kerangal: “i had complicated?

Yes, it was complicated. However, This woman is not at all me, but she has points of contact with me. Consequently, Usually, I am almost invisible in my books. Nevertheless, Here, I appear more and it could have made me think that it was going to be simpler … Meanwhile, And in fact. Moreover. it is more difficult, because, for me, when we write in the third person, we are in a framework of power in a certain way. For example, You can orchestrate a story without borders. In addition, Anything is possible. Moreover, The author is a bit like a director. Meanwhile, When you write in the first person, you are required to a fairly maylis de kerangal: “i had restrictive psychological and optical framework.

The intimate is multidisciplinary with the projection of documentaries, exhibitions, readings by actors, etc. Consequently, I remember that you had slipped a bashung song maylis de kerangal: “i had in “Repair the living”. Moreover, you were an associated artist at the Musée d’Orsay, certain scenes from “Corniche Kennedy” are very cinematographic … Moreover, How do other arts nourish your writing?

My working material integrates all forms of creation. For example, I write with music, painting has taken a big place in my life lately. Moreover, The cinema is very strong too. However, I can see that I write with all of this in my legs. Nevertheless, I also write with literature. Nevertheless, I say it because we say it less. Consequently, I realize that my books feed on my readings. It is a huge engine. If I don’t read, I find maylis de kerangal: “i had it hard to write. Reading and writing are a permanent tango. In Surla daythere is a modian imprint which corresponds to the fact that in previous years. I had reread books by Modiano. There is a maylis de kerangal: “i had very explicit sign for Virginia Woolf and “The Lighthouse Promenade”. The poems of Georges Perros, Papers glued, also accompanied me. It is a way of expressing a form of gratitude to authors who also allow me to express myself. who inspire me.

Le Havre, too, inspires you. As in “Repair the living” and “In the fast”, “Run day” takes place in your childhood city.

I grew up and left her at 18. I come back a little every year in Le Havre because I have family ties there. This is the city where I formed, it is a bit the matrix. It interested me a maylis de kerangal: “i had lot of writing a book where this city has almost a romantic figure. It’s much more than a setting for me. Additionally, It is a physical world that has set up my sensitivity, my imagination. When I released the book. I maylis de kerangal: “i had wondered very much if I would have become author while being born elsewhere. Ts Eliot says: at home, this is the place where we go. I think I saw Le Havre like that. This is the city where I left. where I will never come back to live, but I have very strong ties with this city. There is not a year that passes without me going to Le Havre.

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The beach. ports, refineries, this singular architecture of Augustus Perret, buildings built by Oscar maylis de kerangal: “i had Niemeyerwithout forgetting Dockers threatened by drug trafficking. Is this city very interesting from a romantic point of view?

Le Havre is a fairly well calibrated city for the novel. It is a city with a fairly troubled climate – a light. the wind, the maylis de kerangal: “i had rotten weather. It is a large industrial port which has become one of the biggest container ports in France. Traffic is very sustained. The port is the trafficking in stories, the life courses, the intertwining of the destinies. There is also the narcotrafic that took a foothold in the port. Above all. there is the history of the city with this kind of erasure, traumatized memory, it is an important thing. It is a city that has a story, an extremely interesting geography.

Your narrator meets a resident who tells the bombing of the allies to scare maylis de kerangal: “i had away the Germans. how the city was shaved at 80 % in September 1944. Did you become aware, adolescent, of the violence that the Le Havre of the time had suffered?

No … what this bombing has really represented as a loss-memory. the relationship with the destruction of certain maylis de kerangal: “i had forms of life-this violence I did not. realize it very late. Finally, this book participated in this awareness. I wrote Surla day Between the invasion of Ukraine. October 7, which made me meditate on the destruction of cities in wars: Urbicide. What’s going on when you destroy your city? I recently read the text of the philosopher Marshall Berman who says that the most terrible apocalyptic archaic experience. is to see his city in flames. It is a trauma, according to him, quite unsurpassable.

This city that we said “ugly” has apparently maylis de kerangal: “i had become “tendency”. How ?

The city has changed a lot since my departure in the mid -80s. The station district has been transformed, the port docks became department stores, we built a large university, etc. Le Havre was a city of disgrace. relegated to the end of the rail -it is the terminus of maylis de kerangal: “i had the line -. a port city, gray, concrete, polluted, etc. Perret’s architecture was completely misunderstood. And then the Le Havre had lost their city … It was a fairly hard atmosphere. It has become a completely trendy city. People will spend a weekend there, there is tourism, it’s totally crazy. No one would have had the idea of ​​spending a weekend in Le Havre before. The UNESCO ranking (On July 15, 2005, editor’s note) played in this return in grace. Despite these changes. there remains the same soul: the maylis de kerangal: “i had climate, the air we breathe there and that we recognize, a certain light.

By reading your books. we realize that the sea is omnipresent in particular in “Repair the living” which opens on a surfing session. of three friends. Your father and grandfather were long-term captains. Obviously marking?

I have a fairly strong link with the sea. maylis de kerangal: “i had I bathe all year round in cold water. It is not trivial to live by the sea. In front of a horizon which appears death, disappearance, absence. It gives you a lot of what to think, what to dream of. This relationship to the sea was important for this. Surfing has also been very important. I have three brothers. They all surfed in the country of Caux. I am always subscribed to Surf Session. It is a world that interests me a lot. On maylis de kerangal: “i had an artistic level too. The photos, the relationship between the heavy and the light. What surfing me evokes is the concept of traffic. Circulating between the elements. Between air and liquid, terrestrial and celestial. I am very moved when I see people surf.

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You started writing during two stays in Colorado to sign your. first novel: “I walk maylis de kerangal: “i had under a train sky”. Why did you have to exile to make your desire to write reveals itself?

I cannot say precisely as this book appeared in Colorado. It turns out that it is a moment of caesura in my life. I disembark after a fairly hard event: mourning. There is a kind of break in break. I experience solitude because I left my job to follow my husband. This is the first big experience of the maylis de kerangal: “i had solitary days. This is something I loved. I liked this calm, this moment of momentum. I started writing without a real literary ambition, I came from human sciences. What I experienced was so strong that I continued once back to Paris. There is not one day, another 25 years later, when writing does not cross me.

The intimate festival takes place at the Namur Theater, from August 27 to maylis de kerangal: “i had 31, 2025. Info and reservations: https://intime-festival.be/