Editions Grasset & Fasquelle 61 rue des Saints-Pères, 75006 Paris, France www.grasset.fr

FOREIGN RIGHTS CATALOGUE

FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR 2018

Heidi Warneke Rights Director [email protected]

Louise Quantin Rights Manager [email protected]

Christiaan van Raaijen Rights Manager [email protected]

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CONTENTS

FICTION HIGHLIGHTS Samuel BENCHETRIT

Reviens

Philippe BEYVIN

Les Photos d’un père

Mark GREENE

Federica Ber

Vanessa SCHNEIDER

Tu t’appelais Maria Schneider

7 8 9 11

LITERARY FICTION Gautier BATTISTELLA

Ce que l’homme a cru voir

Guy BOLEY

Quand Dieu boxait en amateur

Pascal BRUCKNER

Un an et un jour

Christophe DONNER

Au clair de la lune

Jeanne LABRUNE

Depuis la terre, regarder les naufrages

Abnousse SHALMANI

Les exilés meurent aussi d’amour

Carole ZALBERG

Où vivre

13 14 16 17 18 19 20

EXPERIMENTAL FICTION Jean-Yves JOUANNAIS

MOAB

Pascal QUIGNARD

L’Enfant d’Ingolstadt

Cyril ROGER-LACAN

L’inconnue

Pierre GUYOTAT

Idiotie

21 22 23 24 2

UPMARKET FICTION Metin ARDITI

Carnaval Noir

Jean-Luc BARRÉ

Pervers

Patrick BESSON

Le milieu de terrain

Alexandre JARDIN

Double-Cœur

Gilles MARTIN-CHAUFFIER

L’Ère des suspects

26 28 29 30 31

GRAPHIC NOVELS Dany LAFERRIERE

Autoportrait de Paris avec chat 32

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE Laetitia COLOMBANI

La Tresse ou Le Voyage de Lalita

33

REMINDERS LITERARY FICTION

Frédéric BEIGBEDER

Une Vie sans fin

Virginie DESPENTES

Vernon Subutex 1, 2 & 3

Olivier GUEZ

La Disparition de Josef Mengele

34 36 37

EXPERIMENTAL FICTION

Ananda DEVI

Manger l’autre

Pascal Quignard

Dans ce jardin qu’on aimait Les larmes

38 39 40

UPMARKET/COMMERCIAL FICTION

Isabelle CARRÉ

Les Rêveurs

Laetitia COLOMBANI

La Tresse

Viktor LAZLO

Les Passagers du siècle

41 43

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NON FICTION HIGHLIGHTS Stephen SMITH

La Ruée vers l’Europe

Marc WEITZMANN

Un temps pour haïr

46 47

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LITERATURE

Adélaïde BON

La petite fille sur la banquise

Geneviève BRISAC

Le Chagrin d’aimer

Marceline LORIDAN-IVENS

L’amour après

Benoîte GROULT

Les Vaisseaux du cœur Journal d’Irlande

48 49 50 52 53

BIOGRAPHIES Maurizio SERRA

D’Annunzio le Magnifique

54

POLITICS AND SOCIAL ISSUES Sophie BONNET Chahdortt DJAVANN

Salutations révolutionnaires : Quatre ans de parloir avec Carlos Iran : j’accuse !

55 56

ART/CINEMA Jean-Jacques ANNAUD et Marie-Françoise LECLERE

Une vie de cinéma

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HISTORY Tania CRASNIANSKI

Le Pouvoir sur ordonnance

Mahmoud HUSSEIN

Les révoltés du Nil : Soulèvements populaires dans l’Egypte moderne

Laurent JOLY

L’État contre les Juifs

58 59 60

NARRATIVE NON FICTION Pierre SAUTREUIL

Les guerres perdues de Youri Beliaev

61

WOMEN’S ISSUES Annick COJEAN

Je ne serais pas arrivée là si…

Valentine FAURE

Lorsque je me suis relevée j’ai pris mon fusil

62 63

PHILOSOPHY François-Xavier BELLAMY

Demeure

Jean-François BRAUNSTEIN

La Philosophie devenue folle

Tristan GARCIA

Nous

François JULLIEN

Si près tout autre

64 65 66

Dé-coincidence Une seconde vie

67 68 69

Bernard-Henri LEVY

L’Empire et les cinq rois

70

Michel ONFRAY

Contre-histoire de la philosophie 10 : La pensée post-nazie

71

Contre-histoire de la philosophie 11 : L’autre pensée 68

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FICTION

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Reviens COME BACK

Samuel Benchetrit August 2018 — 252 pages HIGHLIGHT LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX DE FLORE

Samuel Benchetrit serves up an elegant, tender and zany story about paternity, inspiration and imagination in which the hero, a Dostoyevskian ‘idiot’ who is fundamentally good, falls into all the traps that are laid for him. Addicted to cigarettes and alcohol, lazy and responsibility-shy, and forever wanting for inspiration, an author and confirmed bachelor is desperately clinging on to the only viable project he has been offered: to adapt his book into a TV series. The problem is that the book can’t be found and the producer in question has not yet read it. The author sets off in search of the last extant copy of his book and, discovering that it is in the possession of a bedridden female admirer in a retirement home, resolves to go there and steal it from her. But he has not reckoned with Suzanne, a pretty nurse with a stammer whom he immediately falls in love with and sets about seducing. There ensues a whole series of misunderstandings and unlikely encounters involving Paul Blanchot the tax inspector, Pierre Lamberti the successful writer he envies, Claire, Madrid and a farmer who is missing a hip... The common thread running through all these amusing vignettes is the absence of the son, who has headed off on a trip around the world and addresses to his father this the following riddle: ‘What does an Inuit father say to his son before he goes out into the World?’ Come back. Samuel Benchetrit is a writer, actor, scriptwriter and film and theatre director. In 2008, he won the Prix Lumière du scénario for best screenplay at the Sundance festival for his film J’ai toujours rêvé d’être un gangster. His works include Le Cœur en dehors (Prix Eugène Dabit du roman populiste 2009), La nuit avec ma femme, three volumes of Chroniques de l’asphalte and Chien, which he adapted for the cinema in 2015 and 2018. Rights sold: Italian (Neri Pozza), Spanish (Seix Barral) Rights to previous work sold: Chinese (Shanghai 99), Dutch (Meulenhoff), German (Aufbau Verlag), Hebrew (Keter), Korean (Munhakdongne Publishers), Russia (Ast Publishing group) “Filmmaker and writer Samuel Benchetrit’s style vigorously reenchants the itinerary of a depressed man.” Le Monde des livres “So, yes it’s funny, and we laughed out loud. But it’s also tender, and there’s no way you can’t enjoy it.” Page des libraires “Reviens is a radiant, tender and hilarious book, where a comical and endearing band of characters (and animals) fight their way through life.” Actualité Juive “Welcome to a literary land where tenderness and poetry reign. Welcome to the tiny world of Samuel Benchetrit – filmmaker, playwright, but also writer. For this summery September literary season, he has written a novel as delicious as it is mildly bonkers: Reviens.” Le Quotidien “This filmmaker looks at life, love – and ducks – through his delicate and funny lens… Delectable.” Voici “A gem of a book, filled with humour and tenderness. […] There is infinite tenderness – of the father for his son and the world – and much poetic charm sighing on every page.” Dernière heure 7

Les Photos d’un père PHOTOGRAPHS OF A FATHER

Philippe Beyvin January 2019 — 224 pages HIGHLIGHT

A memorable coming-of-age novel about a teenager who sets on a path to find the father he never knew. A journey pulling the narrator out of his Parisian day-to-day life in the 80’s and into the past of his father, who was a photo reporter during the Vietnam War. Paris, 1984. Thomas Bentley is fourteen years old. He’s a teenager just like every other, whose ultimate goal is to seduce girls, until his mom reveals a secret that turns his life upside down. Charles, the man Thomas has always known to be his dad, is not his birth father. His mom married him when she was already pregnant but claims to have forgotten all about the mysterious one-night stand’s identity. At first, Thomas is bewildered by this news but still decides to investigate. Unfortunately, as his relatives refuse to say anything about it, he eventually gives up on trying to find his dad and buries the story like it never happened. However, ten years later, the mystery surrounding his father catches up to him. His mom receives an invitation to the opening of a photography exhibition and decides it is time for Thomas to know the name of his father. He then finds out he is the son of an Armenian photo reporter who mysteriously disappeared in Cambodia in 1970. This marks the beginning of a long journey for Thomas, as he unfolds the truth of his roots step by step and pieces together the fate of his father, whose life was deeply affected by the historical events of the 20th century.

Philippe Beyvin was born in 1968. Passionate about literature, he works as an editor for Editions Gallmeister and directs the “Americana” series there. Les Photos d’un père is his debut novel.

The first two chapters are available in English. They are translated by the acclaimed American writer Jennifer Haigh, who is in charge of translating the whole novel.

“It's a wonderful book - moving, insightful and psychologically true.” Jennifer Haigh

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Federica Ber Mark Greene August 2018 — 208 pages HIGHLIGHT LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX RENAUDOT LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX WEPLER LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX DECEMBRE

One summer, a young, solitary and introverted Parisian suddenly sees his life radically change upon meeting the elusive Federica. One day, she disappears without any explanation or trace. Twenty years later, he learns that she is suspected of murdering a couple of architects from Rome. He becomes obsessed with the case and tries to tie the loose ends of a story that remained unfinished for far too long. A disillusioned man in his fifties – and failed writer turned high school French teacher – is reading a newspaper. An incident in Italy catches his eye: an odd story where a couple – both architects from Rome – are found dead at the bottom of a hill, tied to one another. Suicide or murder? A hiker is suspected by the police. Her name is: Federica Bersaglieri. He definitely knows that name. Federica has been an enchanted interlude in his life: the woman who awakened him twenty years earlier, one Parisian summer. He, who was so solitary, mired in a flat and tedious existence, saw his life radically change upon meeting Federica, who infused it with something new. Intrigued by the suspicions weighing upon her, he decides to carry out his own investigation around the circumstances behind the couple’s death. A thousand kilometres from there, oscillating between his memories and the investigation, the narrator recreates the story and imagines all the missing parts. The rusty writer finds inspiration and tries to piece together how Federica met the deceased couple. He imagines the budding relationship between Phaedra (who suffers from a degenerative disease) and Federica, who pushes her to aim ever higher, to see the world and appreciate it in all its beauty. Later, Umberto – Phaedra’s lover – also falls under the spell of the Italian girl and, together, they all climb through the Dolomites. Federica – so mysterious, so endearing, so untamed – proves to be the heroine of this poetic and philosophical novel, changing the narrator’s life a second time by giving him the inspiration to write again.

Mark Greene was born in 1963 in Madrid. French and American, he has chosen to write in French. He is the author of several novels.

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Federica Ber Mark Greene August 2018 — 208 pages HIGHLIGHT LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX RENAUDOT LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX WEPLER LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX DECEMBRE

PRESS REVIEWS “Federica Ber is the fifth novel by French-American writer, Mark Greene…. It’s perhaps also his most accomplished, where he gives free reign to his love of speculative and evanescent fictions, not unlike Modiano. […] Reality is there, only dressed in light. Shadows and light.” Livres Hebdo. “The novel is a poignant investigation into what remains of our youth when we think we’ve lost it. It is also – in terms of love – an echo chamber.” Libération “Mark Greene […] walks a narrow path between dream and memory, always on the edge of the abyss. Desire, like writing, is born of the void left by this absent woman. A summit of finesse.” L’Obs “A rare work, but one charged with elegance, filtering the world through a melancholic imagination that cannot speak to the ultra-connected contemporary Rastignacs.” Le Figaro Magazine “As a nostalgic, melancholic wanderer, Greene has an authentically bohemian quality that gives Federica Ber all of its charm.” Lire “Mark Greene’s novels are filled with childhood, fresh air, grace, and an innocence devoid of preciousness – rare in a French novel... Here, writing becomes a magical act.” Le Figaro “Behind the investigation carried out by the narrator is the question of dizziness, above all – that of a romantic memory, of impossible love, of unapologetic solitude, and of fleeting time. The dizziness of life’s precarious balance, propped up by fine writing and filled with masked, delightful irony.” Marie-Claire “The dynamism of a crime novel is definitely there, pushed forward by the occasional unexpected twist and hanging by the thread of a true resolution. Without artifice, it offers a certain philosophy of stepping into a marginal life where sometimes disappearing or evaporating allows you to better live.” Les Inrockuptibles “One must read this marvelous story... it is a tale of love and death. Magical in many respects.” La Montagne “Writing becomes an alchemical operation: filtering the past through a sieve and turning the ashes into the gold of a great book.” Le Figaro Magazine 10

Tu t’appelais Maria Schneider YOUR NAME WAS MARIA SCHNEIDER

Vanessa Schneider August 2018 — 256 pages HIGHLIGHT LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX RENAUDOT LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX FEMINA

Vanessa Schneider has dedicated this book to her cousin, the actress Maria Schneider, who passed away in 2011 and was made famous at the age of 19 for her role in the film, Last Tango in Paris, alongside Marlon Brando. She reveals the equally fascinating and harsh story of a young, fragile woman who was flung too close to the limelight, and became a victim to the pitiless movie industry. As a child, Vanessa Schneider greatly admires her cousin, Maria, who was 17 years older. Despite their age difference, they grow up very close, and even live together for a few years. At age 19, Maria is both made famous and chewed up by the mythical film, Last Tango in Paris, which tells a story of sex and violence between a young woman and an older man. Marlon Brando takes her by force in front of the cameras. She experiences this scene as a rape that brands her for life and leads to her drug addiction... Maria’s acting career nevertheless continues, but from then on, she suffers from being stigmatized for her role in the cult film. The idea of this book is very important to her. She wants to tell her own story and stop being constantly associated with this destructive scene. She asks Vanessa to write it with her, but they never get the chance. Maria dies of cancer in 2011. Today, Vanessa keeps her promise and offers us Maria’s story. From the insane film shoot in Paris to meeting Antonioni in London, from the premieres in New York to the city’s night clubs, from the California desert to the halls of psychiatric hospitals... Through her writing, an entire panorama of the 1970s, of cinema, of the sexual revolution and its excesses, comes back to life. In this magnificent first-hand account, we cross paths with Alain Delon, Brigitte Bardot, Marlon Brando and Patti Smith. We are given an incredible tribute to the great actress that was Maria Schneider. Rights sold: Hungarian (under offer)

Vanessa Schneider is a journalist and novelist. She has published several works, including La mère de ma mère (2008) and Le Jour où tu m’as quittée (2014).

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Tu t’appelais Maria Schneider YOUR NAME WAS MARIA SCHNEIDER

Vanessa Schneider August 2018 — 256 pages HIGHLIGHT LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX RENAUDOT LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX FEMINA

PRESS REVIEWS “Tu t'appelais Maria Schneider is an elegy that never gushes and feels honest. It is taut with restrained emotion, where the writer speaks to an absent woman in order to prevent her from disappearing entirely and keep her share of childhood alive.” Livres Hebdo “A magnificent account, where emotion is discreet, and indecency – thanks to the aqua regia of its style – transforms into a form of decency.” L’Obs “The writing here is both full of reserve and yet free of taboo. It is as disturbing as it is moving, aiming to remind us that Maria Schneider was also, beyond her dark legend, a woman who was full of life.” Madame “Taut from cover to cover, discreet and moving, [Vanessa Schneider’s] portrayal of her cousin is also an equally rich portrait of the colourful characters that make up her family.” Lire “A devastating book.” Vogue “With this book, the author… has written an incredibly moving love letter.” Le Figaro “And then, suddenly, we are swept away and enchanted by the book’s sincerity, urgency, and burning energy.” Les Echos “[Vanessa] Schneider’s text rings strong and true.” Challenges “With great reserve, she breathes life back into this woman through this beautiful text – a life with its share of joys and monsters, where emotion is always just beneath the surface.” Marie-France “Even if Maria’s rehabilitation is powerful and deeply moving, she is not the fuel for this fiery book. No feelings are ever held hostage, and there is no emotional blackmail.… Tu t'appelais Maria Schneider is a dance for a dead star, but also an encouragement for today’s women (and men). Undoubtedly feminine – and feminist without needing to shout it from the rooftops.” Les Inrockuptibles

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Ce que l’homme a cru voir WHAT THE MAN THOUGHT HE SAW

Gautier Battistella August 2018 — 240 pages LITERARY FICTION

Following a tragic accident, Simon thought he could flee his sorrow and rebuild his life, but a phone call twenty years later forces him to confront everything he had put behind him. Is it possible to get rid of one’s past and start over while in denial? Fortysomething Simon Reijik is leading a tranquil existence with his wife. For a living, he erases compromising information on people from the internet, freeing his clients from their troubled pasts and offering them the possibility of a clean slate for the future. He himself thought that he had freed himself from his past, but when he is told that Antoine, his closest childhood friend, is dying, he feels obliged to return to the place where he grew up and which he fled twenty years earlier. Antoine is already gone by the time he arrives, and his death forces Simon to immerse himself once again in the atmosphere, sensations and scenes of his childhood. He is also forced to confront the painful memory that he has been trying to repress for the last twenty years: the car accident that cost the life of his younger brother Benjamin and ripped his family asunder. The protagonists in his life, living and dead, brutally force themselves back into his consciousness. His father, who has retreated into a painful solitude; his mother, who lost her mind when she lost her son; Antoine, who was driving when the accident happened and whom Simon could never bring himself to forgive; and Benjamin, the little brother to whom he could never express the depth of his love while he was still alive. Beautifully written with great emotion and intensity, Ce que l’homme a cru voir is an extremely powerful recreation of the past, a seemingly impossible quest for forgiveness, and a yearning for an emotional No Man’s Land to come to life again. Born in Toulouse, Gautier Batistella lived in China for several years. He is now a food critic. His debut novel, Un jeune homme prometteur (2014), won the Québec France and Jean-Claude Brialy prizes. Ce que l’homme a cru voir is his second novel. “Four years after his first novel, Un jeune homme prometteur, Gautier Battistella returns with this beautiful text on roots and memory. Through his delicate writing, he paints the portrait of a man who slowly disappears then reappears – to himself and to others.... Like an homage to Rimbaud, Ce que l'homme a cru voir is a poetic stroll through the meanders of memory.” Page des libraires “Pantheistic writing that plays with chronology, a style reminiscent of Giono, the revelation of a dark family secret revealed, an ode to love, to heritage, of sharing and self-sacrifice… this novel is surprising, both poignant and poetic.” La Provence “A novel that is serious and sunny, musical and painterly, with the power of infinite compassion.” La Provence 13

Quand Dieu boxait en amateur WHEN GOD WAS AN AMATEUR BOXER

Guy Boley August 2018 — 180 pages LITERARY FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX GONCOURT LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX GONCOURT DES LYCÉENS

Who was this father from a modest background who was a blacksmith, boxer and lover of all kinds of words in all their forms? Guy Boley searches for the answer to this question in a novel about childhood graced by the trademark style which made Fils du feu (Grasset, 2016) such a success. René is born in a small town in the east of France in 1926. His father dies when he’s still young. ‘Bam! Crushed between two carriages like a pancake, the poor man!’ as his mother used to say. He reads all sorts of books, but his favourite is Le Petit Robert dictionary, where he finds lots of strange words that he copies out into his notebooks alongside the lyrics of love songs. He also likes acting and writes dramas and comedies. His mother, who raises him alone, is reluctant to his attempts to educate himself through books, and René must in any case contribute to the household. She therefore secures for him an apprenticeship with a blacksmith and locksmith, and ‘to make a proper man out of him’, she also signs him up for boxing lessons. And amazingly, René loves it and ultimately goes on to become champion of France. But he never forsakes his passion for reading that he shares with his oldest childhood friend Pierrot, whom he loves like a brother. Pierrot likes mythology best of all, and René suspects that it is all these stories of divinities that led Pierrot to become a priest. But it is also perhaps thanks to him that René is able to realise one of his dreams: to stage La passion de notre seigneur Jésus Christ at the parish theatre. A moving story reminiscent of Billy Elliott about a young man’s passion for books and theatre despite his upbringing, the pain and everything else that comes with it.

Guy Boley was born in 1952. His first novel, Fils du Feu (Grasset, 2016) won seven prizes (Grand Prix SGDL du premier roman, Prix George Brassens, Prix Millepages, Prix Alain-Fournier, Prix Françoise Sagan, Prix du métro Goncourt, Prix Québec-France Marie-Claire-Blais).

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Quand Dieu boxait en amateur WHEN GOD WAS AN AMATEUR BOXER

Guy Boley August 2018 — 180 pages LITERARY FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX GONCOURT LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX GONCOURT DES LYCÉENS

PRESS REVIEWS “This affectionate and (sometimes cruelly) humorous book is reminiscent of La Gloire de mon père.” L’Obs “The reader is swept away, happy and deeply moved. A knockout.” L’Alsace “[Guy Boley] is a rare stylist who dares to carefully mix finesse and virility in his superb sentences. He knew what to do with the virus he was given: his book is magnificent.” Le Figaro Magazine “Guy Boley is a brilliant juggler of words who has composed a zany tale weaving together sketches tinged with joy and melancholy, immensely poetic passages inspired by his readings of Victor Hugo and Baudelaire, and others where his burlesque poetic vein takes over. The reader is often spectator: characters play their role marvellously well while preserving their mystery. Guy Boley is able to resuscitate his father thanks to this novel.” Le Figaro “This is the devastating novel of a prodigal son, an endearing epic of an era, and a beautiful, shared family adventure.” La Vie “Magnificently written, this novel is a moving account of a child’s love.” Télé 2 semaines “Guy Boley has reopened the floodgates of his flamboyant style to tell us about his father. He showcases an extraordinary friendship in a bygone France with humour as sharp as his language is splendid...” Le Républicain Lorrain

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Un an et un jour A YEAR AND A DAY

Pascal Bruckner October 2018 — 224 pages LITERARY FICTION

A cruel and fantastic tale of a young woman who finds herself trapped in a hotel. Initially believing herself to have just spent a single night, she soon realizes she has been there a whole year and must now work to pay for every night she has spent. Will she finally regain freedom? Between fantasy and reality, Un an et un jour tells the story of a confinement that ultimately allows a woman to escape her fate. Jézabel Thevanaz is a young math professor who must leave the peaceful alpine summits of Haute-Savoie for Canada. Her father, a former pastor and amateur watchmaker, makes her swear on his deathbed to bring a watch he designed to a friend in Québec. It’s one-of-a-kind, and its main feature isn’t telling the time – but destroying it. While Jézabel is flying over Greenland, her plane is caught in a terrifying storm. After being forced to change its trajectory, the plane lands in a makeshift airport in a remote part of a northern US state. The night is pitch black and freezing cold. The young woman is exhausted and takes refuge in The Plazza, an old hotel of outlandish proportions. She rents a room for the night, thinking she can leave the next day. However, when she wakes up, her nightmare begins. She’s told she hasn’t stayed at The Plazza one night, but… one year! Penniless, she is held prisoner and must work on the upper floor of the hotel until her debt is fully paid. Although she initially rebels, Jézabel gradually grows accustomed to the strange codes and customs of her new environment. She understands that if she wants to get out, she must escape from the upper floor and reach the ground floor. From one floor to another, the young woman encounters a gallery of characters ranging from the frightening to the whimsical. Pascal Bruckner has published many works, including La Tentation de l’innocence (Prix Médicis for an Essay, 1995), Les Voleurs de beauté (Prix Renaudot 1997), Misère de la prospérité (Award for Best Economic Book and the Prix Aujourd’hui 2002), Un racisme imaginaire (2007). His work has been translated and published in over 30 countries. Rights sold for this title: Romanian (Trei) Rights sold for past titles: Arabic (Ceres, Obeikan), Bosnian (Buybook), Bulgarian (Liubomadrie, Gloria Mundie), Chinese (Haitian, East China Normal, SDX Joint, Athena), Croatian (Algoritam, Nakladni Zavod, DHK), Czech (Motto, Mlada Fronta, Pulchra), Dutch (Boom, De Bezige Bij), English (US: Princeton UP, Harvard UP, Algora | UK: Polity Press, Dedalus), German (Random House, Aufbau), Greek (Astarti, Patakis), Hungarian (Szazadveg Foundation, Europa Konyvkiado), Italian (Ugo Guanda, Ipermedium Libri, Garzanti), Japanese (Hosei UP, Kanki), Lithuanian (Tyto Alba), Norwegian (Arneberg, Vidarflaget), Polish (Jagiellonian UP), Korean (Munhakdongne, Dongmoonsun, Jakkajungsin, Vega Books, Arte Books, Mujintree, Next Wave), Portuguese (Brazil : Editora Bertrand, Rocco Editora | Portugal : Gravida, Europa America, Medialivros, Noticias), Romanian (Trei, Nemira), Russian (Ivan Limbakh, Machaon, Inostrannya, Text), Serbian (Sluzbeni Glasnik, Beobook), Slovakian (Kalligram), Slovenian (Beletrina AP, Zalobza), Spanish (Impedimenta, Anagrama, Tusquets, Ariel, PPM), Turkish (Ayrinti, Sel), Ukrainian (Ecem Media, Grani)

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Au clair de la lune BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON

Christophe Donner August 2018 — 272 pages LITERARY FICTION

In the 19th century, that age of revolutions and inventions, two geniuses transformed the world: inventors Nicéphore Niepce and Edouard Scott de Martinville. Christophe Donner returns to the historical genre to tell the story of the encounter between the inventor of the image and the inventor of sound in this wonderful scientific adventure novel. A recording made in 1857 in the form of an engraving on paper and unheard for a century and a half is discovered by American researchers. It features the forgotten voice of the inventor Scott de Martinville singing Au clair de la lune, mon ami…, and is the oldest recording of a human voice yet registered. Christophe Donner places the private lives of these two geniuses within their historical context as our two heroes encounter the Montgolfier brothers, Balzac, Daguerre, Thomas Edison, Firmin-Didot, Morse, Muybridge, a billionaire, an assassin and a suicidal teenage couple, and seeks to understand why they were deprived of the posthumous glory that they seemed destined for in their lifetimes. The novel also reveals a psychological stumbling block: capturing an exact image of nature together with its sound component was both a huge challenge and a form of sacrilege, an offence against God, which they couldn’t bring themselves to commit. Much later, their discoveries came to be considered as entertainment and became better known as the art of cinema… Against a turbulent historical background, marked by the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, this novel celebrating inventors is jubilant. It is a truly human adventure involving two men who are passionate about science and technology. They spend their time searching in vain, or finding something they were not looking for, or not appreciating the importance of what they have discovered. And they both have to endure the incredulity of their contemporaries. They are taken for madmen or sorcerers, but their genius wins out, even though the credit for their discoveries is claimed by others. Christophe Donner was born and lives in Paris. He divides his time between his books and his horses. His previous two novels were autobiographical, but this one is historical, in the same vein as Un Roi sans lendemain (about Louis XVII). Rights to previous works sold: Czech (Host-Vydavatelsttvi), Dutch (Van Gennep Boekhandel), Romanian (Historia), Russian (Ripol Classic) “In this novel, where the writing is both whispered and magical, the author highlights, and develops (invents?) the private lives of Niepce and Scott de Martinville. He shows that both were deprived of the glory and fortune promised by their inventions and discoveries…. Let’s all pick up Au clair de la lune and enjoy a wonderful reading experience!” La Quotidien “By drawing the portrait of a savant and malicious 19th century, Christophe Donner offers readers a fantastic serial filled with colour and inventions.… Possessed by a love of science, this tale is captivating – no, it’s dumbfounding!” Le Vif L’Express “The incredible thing about this writer is that, even if you aren’t necessarily interested in the subject, he is able to turn any story he tells into a thrilling and moving adventure.… That’s called talent.” La Revue

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Depuis la terre, regarder les naufrages FROM LAND, LOOK AT THE CASTAWAYS

Jeanne Labrune August 2018 — 272 pages LITERARY FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX JEAN GIONO LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX DECEMBRE LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX DU STYLE

How will the unlikely encounter between three lonely characters – a bookshop owner in Brittany, a composer who is devastated by the death of his son, and a tormented young man – lead to a deep friendship allowing each of them to move forward and not lose control of their lives? This novel is a magnificent story about luck, fate, and necessity. It all starts with a tragic event. Elias, a pianist and renowned composer, witnesses the drowning of a reckless swimmer in the raging sea off the coast of Brittany. He hesitates to help him, then ultimately decides not to. The boy drowns and washes up on the beach... It’s his son. From that moment on, Elias’ life loses all meaning. Racked with guilt and pain, he severes all ties from the world and abandons everything, beginning with his wife and music. While trying in vain to move on, Elias sells his house in Brittany and finds refuge in Paris, in a tiny apartment in north of the city. One day in the street, he meets a young wanderer, Matthieu, and takes an immediate liking to him. He offers to accomodate Matthieu for a few nights. After an alcohol-fuelled evening, Matthieu disappears, leaving a mysterious surprise in the guest room... At that same moment in Brittany, Léa – a lonely bookshop owner – tries to kill her boredom with multiple one-night-stands with random men. Ever since she left Paris to open her bookstore in this quiet corner of France ten years ago, she has never been able to form a solid relationship with a man. She feels desperate in the face of her solitude and the passage of time, and wonders if her life will ever change... Having fled Paris, Matthieu arrives in Léa’s village. A deep friendship is formed between these two lonely souls, soon joined by Elias, who could never fully cut all ties with Brittany, and returns regularly. Together, all three of them come together to confront life’s hardships and give meaning to their existence. Director and author, Jeanne Labrune, has made eleven feature films and published two highly acclaimed books: L’Obscur (2007) and Visions de Barbès (2014). Rights sold for past titles: Estonian (Eeesti Raamat), Italian (Giunti) “This author has the talent to create maritime settings, and then exalt them. Her descriptions are precise, immersing the reader in a strange journey that deserves to be adapted for the big screen.” Le Télégramme Brest

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Les Exilés meurent aussi d’amour THOSE WHO LIVE IN EXILE ALSO DIE OF BROKEN HEARTS

Abnousse Shalmani August 2018 — 400 pages HIGHLIGHT SHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIX PREMIERE PLUME LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX DU STYLE

Fleeing the Islamic Revolution in Iran, nine-year-old Shirin arrives in Paris with her parents to join her mother’s Communist sisters, who have already been living in France as exiles for a few years. How does one start over again, so far from one’s homeland, after losing all one’s cultural references, and unable to speak the language? Exile can break people. But it can also reveal them. Shirin knows all about this. She’s nine when she arrives in France with her parents following the Islamic Revolution in Iran. She reunites with her mother’s side of the family: a Communist home where, despite being uprooted and losing their social status, they still dream out loud of a social revolution just like they did back in Teheran – although philosophical discussion has replaced armed combat. While Shirin takes refuge in her French lessons, her family’s true colours are gradually exposed: her pregnant mother turns out to be a true magician; her aunts are cold-blooded monsters; her father, a loser; and her grandfather, a very violent man. Sensing the murderous tendencies of the family ideology, Shirin turns her back on them and discovers both love and her adopted country’s culture through Omid: an Iranian Jew rejected by her aunt. For him, she will spy on her family and eventually learn their terrible secret – one that will both devastate and free her. Thanks to Hannah, her neighbour who survived the Holocaust, she will choose freedom and eventually find her own path: one of happiness, through books and Omid’s embrace... Her prodigy brother, however, decides to avenge their mother – who has been humiliated by her own kin – by intoxicating each member of his family, one by one... This is a magnificent first novel about exile through the tender and cruel portrait of a madcap Iranian family. Abnousse Shalmani was born in Teheran and began a career in journalism and film before publishing her first, highly acclaimed book, Khomeiny, Sade et moi (2014). Rights sold for past title: Czech (Garamond), Dutch (De Geus), English (World Editions), Italian (Rizzoli) “Of all our stars for this fall literary season, this is the most poignant.” Paris-Match “A nostalgic novel that implicitly tells the story of how hard it is for an exile to find love.” Famille Chrétienne “What a pleasure it is to read Abnousse Shalmani’s Les exilés meurent aussi d’amour, where she sets the stage for a Persian Zazie who arrives in Paris at age 9. A killer read. [...] While reading it, we are swept away by the mad energy of her writing and reminded that adolescence is a closed-off space where the world is only accessible vicariously through other people. Abnousse Shalmani’s strength is to reconstitute these fragments of the world just as they came to us at age 15, when we were exiled within ourselves.” Grazia “With this text, Abnousse Shalmani takes the tragedy of being a migrant and successfully transforms it into a tragicomedy of exiled people.… It’s a great success that is brimming with ideas!” Le Quotidien 19

Où vivre WHERE TO LIVE

Carole Zalberg October 2018 — 144 pages LITERARY FICTION

Through the story of three generations of characters from the same family, this devastating novel tells sixty years of Israel’s history, it questions the paradoxes of this young country… Through their different voices – all reconstructed by Marie, who was born in France in the 1960s – the members of a Polish-Jewish family tell the story of how they moved to Israel after WWII. Over the course of long, restless decades, the first wave of men and women who had arrived to live in the Jewish state, and later those who were born there, express their expectations and disappointments in a daily existence forever haunted by the Holocaust. It is through the construction of a safe home that the eldest among them had hoped to overcome the end of a world. This is why the youngest wish to prevent it from ever happening again by accepting the demands – more or less justified – their country continues to ask of them. From the post-war aftermath to the present day, the story of those exiled and those who stayed in France are intertwined, forging unbreakable ties. Their voices come together to relate the powerful story of a family’s complex and vital fate – a story that is also a magnificent exposé of Israel’s paradoxes with respect to its pioneers, their dreams and their disappointments.

Carole Zalberg has published several novels, including Feu pour feu (2014, Prix Littérature-Monde) and Je dansais (2017).

Rights sold for this title: Spanish (Armaenia)

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MOAB Jean-Yves Jouannais October 2018 — 288 pages EXPERIMENTAL FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX DECEMBRE

For ten years Jean-Yves Jouannais has been giving a series of lectures at the Centre Pompidou entitled the The Encyclopaedia of Wars. MOAB (normally Mother Of All the Bombs, but Mother Of All the Battles for Jouannais) was born out of the desire to put together excerpts from books on every war and to produce a collage which tells the story of a single battle. MOAB is the fruit of compiling some one thousand quotations from books about war. These works — poetry collections, novels, technical books, first-person accounts, soldiers’ letters, history books — deal with every aspect of every war from Antiquity to the present day. The result is a text of varied styles divided into 22 moments which deploys multiple tenses and unconventional grammar to express the eternal nature of war. MOAB is thus the story of a ‘hyper-battle’ recounted through fragments of all the wars that have been fought since the dawn of humanity. Since embarking on this endeavour in 2008, Jean-Yves Jouannais has continued to research the subject of war. All of his books, which are a blend of novel and essay, seek to find a new way into this same subject, borrowing the voices of both illustrious and anonymous authors. The battle recounted is not defined by name or location - it could be any battle. MOAB is no mere exercise in style; rather, the idea is to bring home to the reader that war, alas, is a brute fact. It is the natural condition of humanity, which is always at war. For its first performance in September 2017 at the Musée des Invalides in Paris, ten selected extracts from MOAB were brought to life by readers, singers, actors and musicians.

Jean-Yves Jouannais was born in 1964 and is the author of La bibliothèque de Hans Reiter (2016) and Les barrages de sable (2014). The publication of MOAB in October 2018 will mark the 10th anniversary of the Encyclopédie des guerres at the Centre Pompidou. The anniversary will also be marked at the Centre Pompidou by several events (exhibitions, screenings, conferences, etc.) from September to November 2018.

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L’Enfant d’Ingolstadt THE CHILD FROM INGOLSTADT

Pascal Quignard September 2018 — 288 pages EXPERIMENTAL FICTION

TRANSFUGE AWARD 2018

Dernier Royaume is a work as difficult to categorize as it is remarkable. Pascal Quignard has already dedicated nine volumes to it, the first of which was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 2002. Complementary yet independent from one another, these works can be read separately. Mixing reflection and imagination, Quignard breaks down barriers and invents a total genre where he is able to do whatever he likes. Tenth and final volume of this lifelong project, L’Enfant d’Ingolstadt explores the question of truth and falsehood – especially through art. L’Enfant d’Ingolstadt takes its title from the Brothers Grimm tale, The Willful Child. In this story, a child refuses to do everything his mother asks of him. To punish him, God afflicts him with a disease. He dies. He’s buried. But the moment his tiny body is underground, his arm reaches out of the ground. He doesn’t stop until his mother visits his grave and strikes his arm with a wooden rod for this to stop. The willful child’s stubbornness is, in fact, a dream. This story is the starting point for an exploration of what is true and what is false. Every art creates false worlds. Even depression is a dream. Right from its very inception, art actively bears witness to a present-tense past: an active dream that passes from one generation to another and changes what is to come. Prehistoric art is a fundamental reference for all contemporary human populations and might even be the truest of artistic heritages. With this last volume, Pascal Quignard arrives at the heart of his quest, trying to question and experience another way of thinking that is not, itself, philosophical. Pascal Quignard is a novelist. He has published many highly successful works both in France and abroad, including Le Salon du Wurtemberg (The Salon in Württemberg), Tous les matins du monde (All the World’s Mornings), Terrasse à Rome, Villa Amalia, and Les Solidarités mystérieuses. He won the Prix Goncourt in 2002 for Les Ombres errantes, which was also the first volume of Dernier Royaume. Rights sold for past titles: Albanian (Koci), Arabic (Ward Book House), Bosnian (TDK), Bulgarian (Lege), Chinese (Henan UP, Yilin), Czech (Vojtech Ripka-Jitro), English (Seagull), Estonian (Kultuurileht), German (Diaphanes), Italian (Frassinelli), Japanese (Suisei-Sha, Kajikasha), Korean (Moonhak-Kwa Jisung), Macedonian (Ars Lamina), Polish (Czytelnik), Spanish (El Cuenco de Plata, Elipsis, La Cifra) “Through his prose – rigorous but never rough, fragmented yet populated with echoes referring us back to a past chapter or volume – Pascal Quignard invites his readers to rethink the very material they are made of, to strip themselves of their beliefs – at the risk of finding them again – in order to catch a glimpse of life as it is.” Le Journal du Dimanche “At the finish line, the object is pure Quignard.... The more pensive among us will find an Ali Baba’s cave for wise scholars, distinguished Latinists, and other collectors of curiosities.” Lire 22

L’Inconnue Cyril Roger-Lacan Octobre 2018 — 96 pages EXPERIMENTAL FICTION

What is most important in life cannot be said, but may potentially be written in secret. The grandson of the famous psychoanalyst, Cyril Roger-Lacan explores the feeling of absence experienced after the death of his mother, followed by the almost obscene silence of the adults around him, and seeks to retrieve a lost voice and face by revisiting memories. On 30 May 1973, the narrator’s mother dies in a car accident when he is still a child. In this book he remembers particular moments and objects which offer a gateway to the memory of a loved one. He poetically and sensitively recalls the visits to the tomb in the cemetery of Montparnasse, the terrifying nights spent at the hospital, and the date of death inscribed in the family record book. He also describes the absence of those gestures of tenderness that are forgotten all too quickly. With each brush stroke he gradually builds up the portrait of this woman as seen by the child that he was. ‘It is impossible to express this state. To express it completely’, writes Cyril Roger-Lacan. ‘But it struck me as sometimes possible, at the edges of bewilderment and abandonment, to enable this dual voice to speak both for the deceased and the orphan she left behind to express together the grace of their love and the horror of their loss.’ A sumptuous literary and universal meditation on loss structured into short and incisive chapters whose limpid language explores the inexpressible and which uses the power of words to evoke the truth of a loss and the grace of a presence rediscovered.

Cyril Roger-Lacan, grandson of Jacques Lacan, lives in Paris and has devoted the bulk of his professional career to the environment. L’inconnue is his debut novel - a belated but splendid eulogy to his prematurely deceased mother.

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Idiotie IDIOCY

Pierre Guyotat August 2018 — 256 pages EXPERIMENTAL FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX RENAUDOT LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX MEDICIS LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX FEMINA

In this autobiographical text, Pierre Guyotat returns to his transition into adulthood and the major events of his life between 1959 and 1962. From the Algerian War to discovering women, as well as his revolt against his family, Idiotie offers an immersion deep inside the genesis of one of France’s greatest living writers. Following his mother’s death, and filled with a violent thirst for freedom, Pierre Guyotat arrives in Paris in 1959 at the age of 19. He writes, while working a number of odd jobs to get by. But, almost immediately in 1960, history catches up with him and he is drafted to fight in the Algerian War. In early 1962, he is arrested by the Military Police in Kabylie and charged with impairing army morale, participating in desertion, and possession of forbidden texts. He is interrogated for ten days, then sentenced to three months’ solitary confinement then sent to a penal military unit in eastern Algeria. This traumatic event is the root of his revolt – but also his work as a writer. Even though Guyotat has been writing since childhood, his true career as an author began after his return from the Algerian War. In 1967, he published Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers, which remains the greatest literary work on the Algerian War to date. This is a powerful text on Pierre Guyotat’s youth, his past rebellions and their present consequences.

Pierre Guyotat is the author of a major body of work, from Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats (Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers, 1967) and Eden, Eden, Eden (1970) to Joyeux animaux de la misère 1 et 2 (2014, 2016). His novels have been translated in several languages and are particularly acclaimed in the USA, Japan and Russia.

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Idiotie IDIOCY

Pierre Guyotat August 2018 — 256 pages EXPERIMENTAL FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX RENAUDOT LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX MEDICIS LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX FEMINA

PRESS REVIEWS “We urge readers to discover […] one of the most fascinating prose writers of the past half-century, alongside Claude Simon.” Le Monde des livres “One of the shocks of this literary season. […] A wonderful “idiocy”! […] A contemporary classic possessed by the adventures of a modern novel and haunted by the ancestral ghosts of all great art.” Les Inrockuptibles “One of the highlights of this fall literary season.... It is reminiscent of Truffaut’s 400 Blows, except the revolutionary nature of the blows here is different. In its moments of sadness and lethargy, it lashes out against military or familial authority, heats up when sexuality turns into anger and, most of all, offers readers a masterful work of literature.” Les Inrockuptibles “One of the great stylists of the French language.... Beauty is the result. Idiotie is teeming with it. If there was a primary reason to read it, this would be why.” Transfuge “Even today, this rebel steps over bodies and other barricades to use language the way someone might make a getaway. It extends an invitation to the reader to exist.” Le Vif L’Express “Since his fiery avant-garde days, 78-year-old Guyotat’s pen has quieted down – though it continues to remain vigorous. A most welcome geyser, far from the lukewarm tap water of this literary season.” Le Canard Enchaîné “In the pages of Idiotie, we see the birth of the unique and essential poet who goes by the name of Pierre Guyotat. He is entirely devoted to ‘all-devouring Creation’, yet always conscious of ‘the world’s violence’, and forever outraged.” Télérama “Idiotie is no exception to the absolute objective that [Pierre Guyotat] has set for himself since the first texts he wrote in his late adolescence – a period to which he has returned, now approaching 80, in an incandescent text, without having lost an ounce of innocence nor a gram of quality.” Le Magazine Littéraire

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Carnaval Noir BLACK CARNIVAL

Metin Arditi August 2018 — 400 pages UPMARKET FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE GRAND PRIX DE L’ACADEMIE FRANÇAISE

What links Paolo il Nano, a Renaissance painter murdered in Venice in 1575, Donatella Cortesi, a PhD student in history found dead in the lagoon in January 2016, and a terrorist plot hatched against the Holy See in June 2016? A thriller of acute contemporary relevance, anchored in the fascinating Venice of the 16th century. At dawn on February 20th 1575, fire, blood and death rain down on Venice. La Serenissima is experiencing its first black carnival. Paolo il Nano, a renowned Renaissance painter and member of a brotherhood of intellectuals, and Bishop Scanziani, the Prosecutor of the Holy Office, are found dead. On the morning of 12 January 2016, the body of Donatella Cortesi, a brilliant young woman studying for a PhD in history, is found floating in the glacial waters of the lagoon close to San Marco Piazza. A few months later, Bénédict Hugues, a professor of medieval Latin at the University of Geneva, comes across a mysterious letter addressed to Bishop Scanziani in 1574. In the days that follow, his home is ransacked and his housekeeper is seriously injured. June 2016, Rome. Extremists from the Libyan branch of Isis are preparing a string of attacks against the Holy See at the behest of a far-right cell within the Roman Curia… Five centuries on, is history about to repeat itself and a new tragedy unfold that will shake the Church to its very foundations? Bénédict Hugues, assisted by a fellow Latin professor, sets out to investigate and all roads seem to lead to the infamous black carnival of 1575: why exactly was Paolo il Nano murdered? Where is his masterpiece, the twelve-fingered Christ, to be found now? Who were the disciples of the Scuola Grande and why was the headquarters of their brotherhood burnt to the ground? A five-century-old mystery may be on the verge of being solved, but time is running out… The writer and journalist Metin Arditi has published several well-received novels, including Le Turquetto (2011) and L’enfant qui mesurait le monde (Grasset, 2016). Rights to previous works sold: Chinese (South Booky), German (Hoffman & Campe), Greek (Patakis)

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Carnaval Noir BLACK CARNIVAL

Metin Arditi August 2018 — 400 pages UPMARKET FICTION

PRESS REVIEWS “Here’s a novel that, in terms of erudition, structure, rhythm, the way it collides time periods […] is every bit as good as the best thrillers. […] It’s fascinating, brilliant and, alas, very topical.” Livres Hebdo “Metin Arditi takes his inspiration from current events to build bridges between past and present, the conspiracies of yesterday and today, intertwining all of them into a fascinating treasure hunt filled with twists and turns. […] The result is an investigation blending happiness, erudition, action and suspense.” Historia “This novel is perfectly precise. We’re in a new Da Vinci Code, a contemporary race against the clock.” La Vie “You’ll lap up this spirited novel, somewhere between The Name of the Rose and Da Vinci Code.” Femme Actuelle “Metin Arditi offers up a learned and suspenseful thriller, once again revealing himself to be an incredibly talented storyteller.” La Cote “Using suspense and careful doses of erudition, Metin Arditi offers us a great novel of adventure and culture, bursting with very topical themes like religious obscurantism and fanaticism.” Point de Vue “A thriller magnificently served up by the erudition and storytelling talent of Metin Arditi.” Actualité Juive

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Pervers Jean-Luc Barré August 2018 — 216 pages UPMARKET FICTION

The successful, egotistical and charismatic novelist Victor Marlioz is not only a writer but also a puppeteer: he orchestrates the most appalling dramas in his own life so that he can then put them into his novels. He owes his success as an author to all the misfortune that he has engendered. The private life of Victor Marlioz and his entourage is a wasteland in ruins, sacrificed for the purposes of the oeuvre of the famous author and self-proclaimed ‘monster’ with a deeply troubling reputation. He does not merely draw inspiration from the dramas, failures and sordid events that make up his life - he actively provokes such occurrences and then stages them in his fiction with little regard for the collateral damage. Julien Maillard is the editor of the literary section of a leading Parisian weekly who specialises in cutting the denizens of literary world down to size and exposing the true face of its powerful figures. Victor Marlioz is an obvious quarry but is untouchable until Maillard receives an anonymous letter one day accusing the writer of having engineered the suicide of his daughter to provide him with material for his fiction. Marlioz agrees to meet the journalist for an interview and there ensues a subtle game of cat and mouse, of investigation and manipulation. Maillard cross-checks the confidences of the novelist with the stories shared by his entourage, including his last wife (a former actress turned alcoholic) and his publisher. and gradually puts together the pieces of this dark and perverse jigsaw. But the deeper Maillard delves into the dark sides of his character, the more the author seems to elude him: who is really the quarry in this psychological hunt? Pervers is a debut novel which shows stunning mastery, inspired by frequenting the literary world and retranscribing it into something larger than life.

Jean-Luc Barré is a writer, historian and publisher. He has written several biographies (including of François Mauriac, Jacques Chirac and Charles de Gaulle), two of which have won the Académie Française biography Award. Since 2008, he has been the editor of the ‘Bouquins’ collection at Robert Laffont.

“Publisher and historian Jean-Luc Barré’s first novel is a dizzying investigation of the deceptions of power, desire, and possession.... With this impeccable novel [Jean-Luc Barré] hides just as much as he reveals.” Livres Hebdo

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Le milieu de terrain THE MIDFIELDER

Patrick Besson Octobre 2018 — 234 pages UPMARKET FICTION

When Elvis, the new manager of YFC, falls for Inès, one of his players’ wife who is 30 years his junior, things begin to fall apart at the little club in the town of Y. A novel as thrilling as a great game of football. Something extraordinary has happened in the little town of Y located between Bordeaux and Arcachon: its football team YFC has managed for the first time in years to get promoted to the second division. The chairman has recruited a new manager to make sure they stay up and to even have a go at making the first division. The manager is 61-year-old Elvis, a biker, a former France player, a widow and a lover of literature. This novel is his private diary. During the first match which YFC plays in League 2, Elvis falls in love with Inès, who is married to one of the players and is thirty years younger than him. This state of affairs generates drama, setbacks and misunderstandings rather like an unbearably tense football match. Who is Inès really? Under the guidance of its new manager, will YFC manage to join the league’s elite? This very contemporary novel shines a caustic and playfully humorous light on the sporting world in a French village. It is also a treatise on love between two people separated by a thirtyyear age gap, written in the trademark style of Patrick Besson which has proved so popular in his other novels published by Grasset, including Les frères de la consolation, La présidentielle and Cap Kalafatis.

Patrick Besson won the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Académie française for Dara and the Prix Renaudot (for which he became a jury member in 2003) for Les Braban. He is a columnist for the news magazine Le Point.

Rights to previous works sold: Chinese (Shanghai 99), German (Artelis Winkler), Greek (Livani, Kastaniotis), Japanese (Shinchosha), Korean (Munhakdongne), Portuguese (Brazil: Rocco Editora), Serbian (Paideia)

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Double Coeur Alexandre Jardin October 2018 — 252 pages UPMARKET FICTION

How the discovery of a mysterious book published in 1947 announcing the creation of a new tribe called ‘The Double-Hearts’ - a passionate breed who embrace love to the full changes a man’s life. One fine day Alexandre Bulle, a bookshop owner by day and a DJ by night, comes across a book called The Double-Hearts. Written in 1947 by Madeleine Lévy, a vivacious woman who was passionate about love and who inspired some of the greats, including Cocteau and Jung, the book urges people to live life to the limits, eschewing the constraints of reason. The Double-Hearts are a community of wild people in thrall to freedom who invent their own recipe for happiness: chance, passion and casual love affairs. Reading the book transforms Alexandre’s life. His relationship with Eglantine is on the rocks and he can feel passion and freedom ebbing from his life - precisely the opposite of what the DoubleHearts advocate! And so he becomes obsessed with this new manifesto and strives to appropriate its precepts. Dizzy, his morose publisher based in the Rue des Saints-Pères, is a dispassionate champion of lucidity and reason and sees this new obsession as unhealthy. He tries to disabuse Alexandre of his illusions and bring him back onto the straight and narrow, but to no avail. Alexandre is determined to be one of these beautiful visionaries who lead life to the limits and so he signs up to Happn, an online dating app. It is through social media that the Double-Cœurs identify each other and meet up. And then the palpitating casual encounters and romantic adventures begin. Alexandre soon makes the acquaintance of Madeleine Denon, a passionate woman with a zest for life and unbridled love. But seducing her will be far from easy…

Alexandre Jardin is the author of some twenty books, including Le Zèbre, L’île des Gauchers, Fanfan, Le roman des Jardin and Des gens très bien... He is one of the uncontested masters of the romantic comedy genre.

Rights to previous works sold: Dutch (De Bezige Bij, Meulenhoff), Estonian (Eesti Raamat), Greek (Modern Times), German (Random House), Italian (Rizzoli Libri, Giunti), Romanian (Humanitas), Russian (AST), Turkish (Can Yayinlari)

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L’Ère des suspects A TIME OF SUSPICION

Gilles Martin-Chauffier August 2018 — 288 pages UPMARKET FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX RENAUDOT LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX GONCOURT LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX GONCOURT DES LYCÉENS LONGLISTED FOR THE GRAND PRIX DE L’ACADEMIE FRANÇAISE

In a suburb outside of Paris that has been given up on by the French state, 17-year-old Driss Aslass is found dead. The night before, he was being pursued by a police officer. Everything seems to point to an accident, but it hardly matters: the die is cast. The great French comedy can now begin. The actors hurry on stage to make their entrance. A gang leader involved in drug dealing; Gildas Méheut, a jaded police chief; Pauline Meyssan, an ambitious assistant lawyer; Guillaume Vincourt, the owner of a tabloid magazine... They all get involved, each trying to get their share. But no one seems to be trying to resolve the most important mystery: who actually did it? From the Élysée to the Ministry of Home Affairs, from a police precinct to a high-class swimming pool, from the editorial staff of a tabloid magazine to an estate along the Gulf of Morbihan, L'Ere des suspects takes us behind the scenes of state power and exposes its dark side: hypocrisy, manipulation, lies, hazy confessions, and social condescendence. All form a relentless machine where victims of society become the trophies of those in charge who make a living pretending to be moved by things that don’t actually impact them. Part political thriller, part social satire, Gilles Martin-Chauffier has written a French Bonfire of the Vanities: a choral novel where one person’s misery is another’s excuse take on the spotlight. A terribly effective page-turner.

Gilles Martin-Chauffier has been the Editor-in-chief of Paris-Match since 1996. L'Ere des suspects is his eighth novel with Grasset. Similarly to Les Corrompus (winner of the 1998 Prix Interallié), Silence, on ment (Prix Renaudot des Lycéens 2003) or Paris en Temps de Paix, France is his protagonist: a caste society where the official language is doublespeak. This is a brutal society that has no time for sugarcoated words. Rights sold for previous works: Greek (Sokolis, Polis), Russian (Fluid Editions) “A French Bonfire of the Vanities.... A pure delight.” La Provence “This funny and cruel novel plays with clichés and prejudices. Its figures reveal themselves to be more complex and secretive – and, consequently, all the more endearing.” L’Opinion indépendante du Sud-Ouest

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Autoportrait de Paris avec chat SELF PORTRAIT OF PARIS WITH CAT

Dany Laferrière March 2018 — 320 pages GRAPHIC NOVEL

This is Dany Laferrière’s most unusual novel to date: a declaration of love for Paris in the form of a graphic novel. Having recently settled in the capital, and in the middle of preparing the speech for his admission to the Académie Française, Dany Laferrière takes the reader on a tour of Paris, stopping by at the café terraces of St-Germain-des-Prés and taking in the iconic monuments, and along the way he composes a wonderful hymn of praise to the world’s most romantic city. Dany Laferrière wrote all the text and drew all the illustrations himself for this ambitious and original Autoportrait de Paris avec chat. Newly arrived in Paris, the author finds a cat outside his front door which invites itself into his life and follows him everywhere… This proves to be the starting point for a book on the author’s daily life, his neighbourhood and his new city. Guided by the most charming member of the Académie Française, we enter into a Paris fashioned in his image – a Paris which in some sense is none other than the author himself. We walk the streets with our narrator and travel back in time to meet those who made this city great, taking in its intellectual and architectural heritage, from Honoré de Balzac to the Arc de Triomphe, and its cafés and fashion designers, from Le Café de Flore to Gabrielle Chanel. Paris has also been enriched by the many foreigners who have spent time there, including Ernest Hemingway, Rudolf Nureyev and Guillaume Apollinaire. Fully of juicy anecdotes, this illustrated guide is a little gem of humour and acute observation. Plenty of books by Dany Laferrière have been translated into many languages, including L’Enigme du retour (Prix Médicis 2009) and the legendary Comment faire l’amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer ? He was elected to Montesquieu’s seat in the Académie Française in 2013. Foreign rights sold: Chinese (Shanghai 99) Right sold for previous works: Chinese (Shanghai 99, Haitian Publishing House), Creole (Leve Association), Czech (Argo Spol), Danish (Turbine Forlaget), English (Canada : Arsenal Pulp, Douglas & Mcintyre / US : WWB / UK : Quercus), German (Wunderhorn), Greek (Thines), Italian (66thand22nd, New Books), Japanese (Fujiwara Shoten), Korean (Thinking Tree, Open Books), Polish (Weltbild Polska), Romanian (Echinox), Russian (Text), Serbian (Laguna), Spanish (Alianza, El Cuenco de Plata, Pepitas de Calabaza)

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La Tresse ou Le voyage de Lalita THE BRAID OR LALITA’S JOURNEY

Laetitia Colombani and Clémence Pollet November 2018 — 48 pages CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

The extraordinary battle of a woman for her daughter’s future.

Smita untangles her daughter Lalita’s hair, as she does every morning. She has never cut it, the women here keep their hair from birth, sometimes even their whole lives. She divides the hair in three skeins then braids them with expert hands. But today is not like any other day. Today, Lalita starts school. La Tresse ou Le voyage de Lalita is the indian part from the bestseller La Tresse adapted into an illustrated children’s book. This gorgeous and radiant album tells the story of Dalit-born (“Untouchables”) Smita and her daughter Lalita as they embark on their journey through India. A wonderful story about life, rebellion, faith and hope, beautifully drawn into pictures, which leads to think about social differences, women’s status, and the access to education. Laetitia Colombani is a screewriter, a director and an actress. She wrote and directed two featurelength films, A la folie… pas du tout and Mes stars et moi. She also writes for theater. Her debut novel, La Tresse, was published in May 2017 and still is an amazing international bestseller. It has been translated worldwide and is currently in the process of being adapted into a motion picture film. Clémence Pollet has graduated from the Estienne school, and currently studies Decorative Arts in Strasbourg and Bologna. In addition to illustrating, she also practices engraving with several techniques, such as etching, aquatint, and engraving on linoleum. She illustrated Alice in Wonderland and Confucius. Foreign rights sold for La tresse: Arabic (Arab Cultural Centre), Castilian & Catalan (Salamandra), Chinese simplified (People’s Literature Publishing House), Croatian (Znanje), Czech (Euromedia), Danish (Arvids Forlaget), Dutch (Ambo Anthos), Estonian (Varrak), German (S. Fischer Verlag), Greek (Patakis), Hebrew (Kinneret), Hungarian (Kossuth), Icelandic (Forlagid), Italian (Nord c/o Mauri Spagnol), Japanese (Hayakawa), Korean (Balgunsesang), Lithuanian (Alma Littera), Norwegian (Arneberg Forlag), Polish (Literackie), Portuguese (Bertrand Editora), Portuguese – Brazil (Intrinseca) , Romanian (Trei), Russian (Eksmo), Serbia (Laguna), Slovak (Ikar), Swedish (Sekwa), Turkish (Murat Sezer), Ukrainian (Hemiro), Vietnam (AZ Communication & Culture), World English (Picador - MacMillan)

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Une Vie sans fin A LIFE WITHOUT END

Frédéric Beigbeder January 2018 — 320 pages LITERARY FICTION When Frédéric Beigbeder decides to tackle one of the most important contemporary social issues – immortality – as a 21st century Dorian Gray, the result promises to be comical, while providing food for thought... The eternally young man of Un roman français has reached the half-century mark. Here he is, obsessed with death after starting a new life with a young woman, solemnly promising his young daughter that he will never pass away. The narrator then races against time to try every new procedure that might make him immortal... Everything in this book appears right out of a fantasy novel, to the point of reminding readers of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Island of Doctor Moreau, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And yet, everything in it has been scientifically proven. The hero meets the world’s top researchers in human longevity (Professors Buganim, Antonarakis, Choulika, Alexandre, Saldmann, Church) in Israel, Switzerland, Austria, France and the US. He examines all the current legal and illegal research on techniques (cell rejuvenation, telomere lengthening, stem-cell injections, oxygenation of blood, 3D printing of organs, transplanting humanized pig organs, implanting artificial intelligence, fusing man and robot using digitally stored DNA) that could lead to the imminent (2030?) replacement of homo sapiens with a post-human species... Wars over oil or climate change are simply a harbinger of the future bloody wars between old rich and young poor people, between immortals and mortals. Because, if we can live two or three hundred years, we’ll have to make room on the planet... But who will be allowed to stay alive? As a novelist, Frédéric Beigbeder is also the author of L'amour dure trois ans, 99 Francs, Windows on the world (awarded the 2003 Prix Interallié), Un roman français (Prix Renaudot 2009). His books have been translated all over the world. As a journalist and critic, he is responsible for the literary section of Figaro Magazine. He is also a regular guest on France Inter’s national morning radio show, and a frequent contributor to El Pais Icon (Spain), Interview (Germany), and Esquire (Russia). Foreign rights sold for this title: Bulgarian (Colibri), Castilian (Anagrama), Chinese (Citic), Croatian (Ocean More), Dutch (De Geus), English (World Editions), German (Piper), Italian (Bompiani), Japanese (Kawade Shobo), Lithuanian (Tyto Alba), Macedonian (Tri), Polish (Noir sur Blanc), Romanian (Trei), Russian (Azbooka-Atticus), Serbian (Booka), Ukrainien (KM Books), Vietnamese (Nha Nam). Foreign rights sold for previous works: Albanian (Shtepia Botuese), Armenian (Antares), Azerbaijani (Qanun), Bosnian (TDK), Bulgarian (Colibri), Chinese simplified (Shanghai 99) Croatian (Ocean & More), Czech (Garamond), Danish (Egmont), Dutch (De Geus), English UK (Harper Collins), Estonian (Varrak), Finnish (Like), Georgian (Paltira), German (Piper Verlag), Greek (Astarti), Hebrew (Babel), Hungarian (Europa), Italian (Mondadori), Icelandic (Forlagid), Japanese (Kadokwa), Korean (Chong-Ye Won), Latvian (Zvaigzne), Lithuanian (Tyto Alba), Macedonian (Tri), Montenegrin (Nova Knjiga), Polish (Noir sur Blanc), Portuguese – Brazil (Record), Portuguese – Portugal (Presenca), Romanian (Pandora-Trei), Russian (Azbooka-Atticus), Serbian (Booka), Slovenian (Vale Novak), Spanish Castilian (Anagrama), Spanish Catalan (Ara Libres), Thai (Bluescale), Turkish (SEL), Ukranian (Krajina Mriy), Vietnamese (Nha Nam)

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Une Vie sans fin A LIFE WITHOUT END

Frédéric Beigbeder January 2018 — 320 pages LITERARY FICTION

PRESS REVIEWS ‘It’s funny, profound, brilliantly researched and fiendishly artful.’ Le Figaro Magazine ‘A touching and contemplative literary curve ball.’ Femina ‘Beigbeder has produced one of the most human, touching, relevant and funny stories about passing time, the acceptance of ageing and the need to love. If you’re looking for something quite unlike anything else to read, then choose this.’ Le Parisien ‘A call to arms against transience from a Beigbeder who is back on top form, with all his trademark wit.’ Lire ‘This mad philosophical and biological quest […] is a life-affirming and intelligent reflection on the meaning of life. Decidedly ambitious, Monsieur Beigbeder!’ Psychologies Magazine ‘As always, Frédéric Beigbeder knows perfectly well how to seize burning issues. In Une Vie sans fin, he captures immortality, the desire it inspires and its likelihood. A tale between satire and confidences of a father, a lover and a writer who wants to live forever.‘ Transfuge ‘Behind this wild poursuit of immortality appears a sharper and deeper reflexion that you would think. The new ambitions of a former deranged young man turned father who always found a way to reinvent himself despite the passing time.’ Elle

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Vernon Subutex Virginie Despentes LITERARY FICTION Prix de la Coupole Prix Landerneau Prix Anaïs Nin SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE

Vol 1: January 2015 - 340 pages. 290, 000 copies sold (420,000 copies pocketbook edition) Vol 2: June 2015 - 400 pages. 180, 000 copies sold (240,000 copies pocketbook edition) Vol. 3: May 2017 - 400 pages 130,000 copies sold (to be published in May)

Virginie Despentes is finally back with a new gripping saga. With its short chapters and incredible pace, Vernon Subutex is a page-turner in two volumes, as addictive as the best TV series. The author of Baise Moi and King Kong Theory strikes again, this time inventing the postmodern picaresque novel. As a former record store owner, Vernon Subutex is one of the last survivors of a dying world. Many of his friends are dead or have left Paris. All except for Alex Bleach, a popular singer and the last person from his group of friends who can still help him pay his bills. One evening, Alex Bleach films himself in Vernon’s apartment high on coke. A few weeks later, he dies of an overdose. Vernon is evicted from the apartment he has lived in for ten years. He has no other choice but to have different friends put him up, without anyone really being able to help him. Vernon quickly finds himself to be the target of both a treasure hunt and a manhunt. Several people – a producer, a director, a biographer, a female private detective, a pornstar, a young woman in a hijab – are looking for Vernon to get their hands on the exclusive rushes of Bleach’s crazy will. But Vernon is unaware that he is being tracked down. Since he has no money, he has been hopping from apartment to apartment on the couches of ex-rockers. Every flat he stays in reveals a new life, and every life sends the reader to a brand new universe, until the different threads are woven together to form the patterns of a vast tapestry that pulls the reader through the looking glass where they will find Vernon in the street, with no place to squatin the second volume… Among other books, novelist and filmmaker Virginie Despentes is the author of Baise-moi (1993, adapted for the screen and codirected with Coralie Trinh Thi), Les Jolies Choses (1998), Teen Spirit (2002), Bye Bye Blondie (2004), and an account King Kong Theorie (2006), all published by Grasset. She received the Prix Renaudot for Apocalypse bébé (Grasset, 2010). Foreign rights sold: Croatian (Ocean&More), Danish (Tiderne Skifter), Dutch (De Geus), English (UK: Quercus Publishing-Maclehose Press – US: Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Estonian (Varrak), Finnish (Like Publishing), German (Kiepenhauer & Witsch), Greek (Stereoma), Italian (Bompiani), Macedonian (ArtConnect), Norwegian (Gyldendal Norsk), Polish (Otwarte), Portuguese – Brazil (Companhia das Letras), Serbian (Booka), Slovakian (ARThur), Swedish (Norstedts), World Castilian (Penguin Random House). ‘A consummate art of mixing characters, voices, and plot lines, all with an incontestable feel for shifting rhythms. This is not a novel, it’s an electrocardiogram.’ Le Figaro Littéraire ‘An astonishing topography of contemporary French society.’ Les Inrocks

English translation of Volume 1 & 2 is available | Ongoing TV series adaptation

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La Disparition de Josef Mengele THE DISAPPEARANCE OF JOSEF MENGELE

Olivier Guez August 2017 — 240 pages Prix Renaudot 2017 Longlisted for Prix Goncourt, Prix Goncourt des lycéens and Prix Interallié ALMOST 300,000 COPIES SOLD (TRADE EDITION) After a 30-year manhunt, Josef Mengele, the torturing doctor of Auschwitz, and one of Nazism’s most emblematic figures, died in South America under mysterious circumstances. This powerful, geopolitical thriller is the result of an in-depth investigation of perhaps the Third Reich’s most secretive man, and portrays the captivating deconstruction of the myth behind “the Angel of Death.” It invites readers to explore the depths of evil. Hiding behind several different pseudonyms, protected by networks and his family’s money, and supported by a community in Buenos Aires that still dreams of a founding a Fourth Reich, Mengele believes he can invent a new life for himself... In Germany, it is a time of reconstruction. Peron’s Argentina is benevolent. And the entire world simply wants to forget. But soon the chase is on again, first by the Mossad, then by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. With the help of sympathizers, Mengele finds temporary refuge in a remote farm in Brazil. From then on, he will never have a moment’s rest. He survives through paranoia, but becomes the claustrophobic prisoner of his own hopeless situation. He will eventually be found dead, having drowned on a beach along the Brazilian coast. How could the SS doctor possibly slip through the cracks of an international investigation spanning three decades? What complicity was there between West Germany and South America, and how did he benefit from it? This untold and disturbing story shines a light on geopolitical mutations, the way historical perspectives change, and the process by which the world learned about the Holocaust. Here, Nazi atrocities overlap with the modernity of the 1960s and 1970s, leaving us with our Western ambiguities. And with the question: What do we do with men who have committed acts of evil? This highly anticipated book recounts Josef Mengele’s terrifying odyssey through South America – a place where former Nazis, Mossad agents, greedy women and dictators make their way in a world corrupted by fanaticism, money, and ambition. Olivier Guez is a writer, journalist, and screenwriter. He has published a number of works, including L’impossible retour, une histoire des juifs en Allemagne depuis 1945 (2007), Eloge de l’esquive (2014) and Les Révolutions de Jacques Koskas (2014). He is a regular contributor to Le Monde, Le Point, The New York Times and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). In 2016, he received the German Film Award for Best Screenplay, for the film The People vs. Fritz Bauer. Foreign rights sold: Castilian (Tusquets), Chinese (Haitian), Croatian (Meandar Media), Czech (Garamond), Estonian (Eesti Raamat), Danish (Franske Bogcafes), Dutch (Meulenhoff), English (UK : Verso), German (Aufbau Verlag), Greek (Kritiki), Hebrew (Hakibutz), Hungarian (Muvelt Nep), Italian (Neri Pozza), Japanese (Tokyo Sogensha), Korean (The Open Books), Lithuanian (Zara), Polish (Sonia Draga), Portuguese (Planeta), Romanian (Meteor Press), Serbian (Carobna), Slovakian (Marencin), Slovenian (Mladinska Knijga), Turkish (Profil Kitap), and Vietnamese (Nha Nam) “La Disparition de Josef Mengele is, without a doubt, the page-turner of the season – even if it sometimes feels like it is sinking into darkness… An exofiction, or faction, or ‘non-fiction novel’ is not just some trend but, instead, a way to deconstruct history and help us look truth in the face. Olivier Guez has taken an already well known story, and created a fantastically new novel.” Frédéric Beigbeder in Le Figaro Magazine “La Disparition de Josef Mengele will leave no reader unscathed. The character remains hateable. Yet, by refusing to caricature him as a monster, by using fiction to transcend reality, by insisting on his mediocrity, his anxieties and his irascibility, Olivier Guez offers a superb biography on Evil incarnate.” L’Humanité Dimanche

Under option for a movie adaptation 37

Manger l’autre EAT THE OTHER

Ananda Devi January 2018 — 224 pages EXPERIMENTAL FICTION

Renowned, award-winning author, Ananda Devi, tackles the taboos surrounding the human body with Manger l’autre. She portrays the life of a young obese woman and – through her heroine’s story – questions the excesses of our contemporary world, its feverish consumption and its poisonous social networks. A disturbing and captivating novel. In the beginning was the voice, excessive and ferocious, of a young adolescent whose body would not stop swelling since her birth, and whose life would only get worse. Born covered in rolls and folds, devouring her mother’s breast, she would fatten to the point where she quickly terrified everyone from strangers, to nannies, and ultimately her disgusted mother, who eventually fled her. Now alone with a father who loves her above all else (and who believes she has an invisible twin sister that she ingested while in the womb), and bullied by her classmates who follow her to the bathroom to photograph and feed the great Eye of the Internet, she quickly drops out of school and finds herself bedridden at home, where her father cooks for hours on end to feed “his princesses.” Here, she continues to gain weight and expand – to the point where she finds herself stuck in a doorframe, and unable to move. This stroke of bad luck has a silver lining because it brings her the love of René: the carpenter who rescues her and introduces her to the forbidden fruit of the flesh – that is, until the great Eye eventually catches up with her... Manger l'autre is a modern tale and novel about excess. It is as much about an obese girl who is incapable of curbing her appetite as it is the allegory of a society that cannot stop consuming – and yet is obsessed with the cult of thinness, the Ego, and the image. With great strength and virtuosity, Ananda Devi shatters the taboos surrounding the body, and relates the tribulations of a character, who is also our mirror... Ananda Devi is an ethnologist, a translator and a writer and is considered to be one of the major figures of Mauritian literature. She has published several collections of poetry, short stories and novels, including Ève de ses décombres (winner of the 2006 Prix des Cinq Continents, and the Prix RFO) as well as Le Sari vert (2010, Prix Louis Guilloux). ‘In its choice of a self-destructive and obese individual as its central character, Ananda Devi’s new novel takes its place in a long literary tradition which opts for the grotesque and the deformed as its primary subject matter.’ Le Monde des Livres ‘A dark Rabelaisian fable in which a mistreated body holds a mirror up to society’s own shortcomings.’ Le Nouvel Obs 38

Dans ce jardin qu’on aimait IN THIS GARDEN WE ONCE LOVED

Pascal Quignard May 2017 — 176 pages EXPERIMENTAL FICTION

Devastated by his wife’s death, Reverend Simeon Pease Cheney tries to fill her absence by devoting himself to his garden, where he deciphers and writes down all the sounds he hears, one hundred years before Olivier Messiaen decided to do the same... After the success of Les Larmes, Pascal Quignard returns with this magnificent tale of love in the vein of the Brontë sisters, inspired by a true story. Simeon Pease Cheney is the first modern composer to have noted all the bird songs he heard in his parish garden, from 1860-1880. He wrote down all these sounds, right down to the water dripping onto a cobblestone from the half-open tap in his courtyard, and the particular sound made by the coat rack when the wind would gust into the capes and trench coats in the winter. Enchanted by this strange, sonic parsonage, Pascal Quignard dives headfirst into the story of this man whose love for his wife was so unparalleled, he chased his daughter out of the house when she reached the same age his beloved wife was when she died... And yet, his daughter is the one who eventually published the sheet music to her father’s garden, at her own expense. Pascal Quignard is a novelist (Le Salon du Wurtemberg, Tous les matins du monde, Terrasse à Rome, Villa Amalia, Les Solidarités mystérieuses). He was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 2002 for Les Ombres errantes (The Roving Shadows). His last book was Les Larmes (2016). Foreign rights sold: Japanese (Kajikasha), Korean (Franz), Spanish (El Cuenco de Plata) Foreign rights sold for Les Larmes: Castilian (Mexico/Spain/US: Sexto Pisto; Latin American excluding Mexico: El Cuenco de Plata), Japanese (Suisei Sha), Korean (Moonji), World English (Seagull Books) Foreign rights sold for the different volumes of Dernier Royaume: Albanian (Koci), Arabic (Ward Book House), Bosnian (TDK Sahinpasik), Bulgarian (Lege Artis), Castilian (La Cifra, El Cuenco de Plata for Latin America), Chinese (simplified: Yilin), Czech (Vojtech Ripka Jitro), Estonian (Kultuurileht), German (Diaphanes), Japanese (Seido Sha), Korean (Moonhak Kwa), Polish (Czytelnik), Portuguese (Portugal: Gotica), World English (Seagull Books) “Pascal Quignard, the organist of French literature, resuscitates Reverend Simeon Pease Cheney […] in this magnificent and poignant ode, which draws its inspiration from theatre, fables, psalms, stage directions, eulogies, ornithological treatises and Japanese Noh theatre.” L’Obs

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Les Larmes TEARS

Pascal Quignard September 2016 — 224 pages EXPERIMENTAL FICTION

Pascal Quignard, author of a grandiose literary work, returns once again with a novel cut from the same cloth as those that have made him the internationally renowned author we’ve come to know. Here, he tells the story of Nithard who, in the 9th century, was the first person to ever write in French. Like in Tous Les Matins du Monde (All the World’s Mornings – translated internationally), where we discover the famous viole-player Marin Marais, Les Larmes resuscitates another figure that history forgot: Nithard, the first person to ever write in French, in 842. In his inimitable style, Pascal Quignard reinvents the man’s life, as well as that of his twin brother, Hartnid. Pascal Quignard has never felt any national, or even regional pride. Only languages enthral him – like that precise moment when, in a child’s mouth, sound becomes a word and we shift from a symbolic system to something else: the birth of a language. He shares this moment of transformation with us through the story of these two brothers. Pascal Quignard is a novelist (Carus, Le Salon du Wurtemberg, Les Escaliers de Chambord, Tous les matins du monde, Terrasse à Rome, Villa Amalia, Les Solidarités mystérieuses) and has written a great number of literary texts where fiction mingles with reflection. The first volume of Dernier Royaume, Les ombres errantes, received the Prix Goncourt in 2002, and Mourir de penser, volume IX, was published in 2014. Foreign rights sold: Castilian (Mexico/Spain/US: Sexto Pisto; Latin American excluding Mexico: El Cuenco de Plata), Japanese (Suisei Sha), Korean (Moonji), World English (Seagull Books) Foreign rights sold for the different volumes of Dernier Royaume: Albanian (Koci), Arabic (Ward Book House), Bosnian (TDK Sahinpasik), Bulgarian (Lege Artis), Castilian (La Cifra, El Cuenco de Plata for Latin America), Chinese (simplified: Yilin), Czech (Vojtech Ripka Jitro), Estonian (Kultuurileht), German (Diaphanes), Japanese (Seido Sha), Korean (Moonhak Kwa), Polish (Czytelnik), Portuguese (Portugal: Gotica), World English (Seagull Books) “Les Larmes remains faithful to the author’s enlightened meanderings, somewhere between erudition and generously sharing knowledge. It is an endless source of wisdom, beauty, and amazement.” JDD “Words that seem to surge from the retorts of an alchemist – who could also be a musician or a painter” Le Point “A novel by the prodigy, written in crystalline language” Le Magazine littéraire

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Les Rêveurs THE DREAMERS

Isabelle Carré January 2018 — 304 pages PRIX RTL LIRE UPMARKET/COMMERCIAL FICTION

With Les Rêveurs, acclaimed film and theatre actress, Isabelle Carré, offers us her first novel. In it, she portrays the daily life of a broken, yet incredibly touching, family – her own – made up of her artist father, bohemian mother, and two brothers. With great sensitivity, she returns to her childhood and larger-than-life adolescence, whisking the reader back to the whirlwind years of the 70s. It all begins with a young art student and a pregnant 17-year-old girl – whose bourgeois family keeps hidden away in a suburban apartment until the baby is born. When they meet, it’s love at first sight. They have no job and no money, but they decide to move in together and keep the child. The first months are hard, but the young man quickly finds work in a fashion house. One year later, their daughter Isabelle is born, followed by a little boy four years later. Isabelle and her brothers spend their childhood in an enormous Parisian flat, where their parents’ friends parade in and out every night. This improbable space is so big, the children use roller skates to get around. With the exception of the parents’ room, this joyful, playful, chaotic apartment is painted bright red, and their father even has enough space for his own workshop. Every Sunday, the family goes to Orly and watch the airplanes take off. These are happy, gentle and innocent years that forever leave their imprint on the narrator... But this period was not to last, and the family would soon be confronted with great trials. Isabelle’s mother falls into deep depression. Trying to find himself, her father sleeps with multiple partners, realizes he is homosexual, and eventually leaves the family home. Caught in the middle of all this are the children, who are suddenly lost. At age 14, Isabelle tries to commit suicide. At 15, she declares her independence and moves into a tiny apartment by herself. Thankfully, there’s theatre… She begins taking lessons and discovers a world that allows her to find fulfilment and freedom. A beautiful coming of age novel.

Isabelle Carré is an actress. She has been honoured with several awards for her roles (César for Best Actress in 2003, two Molières for her theatrical performances in 1999 and 2004). Les Rêveurs is her first novel.

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Les Rêveurs THE DREAMERS

Isabelle Carré January 2018 — 304 pages UPMARKET/COMMERCIAL FICTION

PRESS REVIEWS ‘It’s seductive and a constant pleasure to read. There’s fantasy, lots of it, and drama – in short, there’s life.’ Lire ‘If every detail of the story feels so true, it’s also because of the author’s power of inventing what she wasn’t familiar with and supplementing the memory with imagination to create a fascinating book.’ Elle ‘A perfect consistency of tone and very finely observed, in the tradition of writers like Annie Ernaux.’ La Croix

‘Isabelle Carré dares to lay bare the ravages of childhood which eat away at the foundations of her personal identity (…) Discrete? Sincere and true, rather. Luminous? No, serious and determined. And moving too, as she seeks, finds and maintains that delicate balance between restraint and the sharing of confidences.’ TELERAMA ‘A portrait of a woman, the depiction of an era, a novel of self-discovery and a reflection on the gap between appearances and reality.’ France Culture ‘Every chapter is like a scene from a docufiction: cathartic, arresting, sometimes sombre, poetic, dreamlike…’ Le Figaro Magazine ‘Les Rêveurs gives off the scent of childhood, intermingled with toxic odours. A perfect brew for finally bursting open family secrets.’ Le Parisien ‘Her project is reminiscent of Modiano in her desire to tear away the opaque veil and actively seek her freedom. A novel of sensations and sensibilities which explores the complexities of a marginalised family.’ Le Journal du Dimanche

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La tresse THE BRAID

Laetitia Colombani May 2017 — 224 page UPMARKET/COMMERCIAL FICTION 350.000 COPIES SOLD (TRADE EDITION)

Smita, Giulia, Sarah: three lives, three continents, three women with nothing in common, but nevertheless bound by a rare expression of courage... like three strands of hair in a braid. Here is a breathtaking contemporary novel, whose construction is not unlike the films of Alejandro González Iñárritu, Babel and 21 Grams, or even Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. India. Smita is an untouchable, married to a “rat hunter,” whose job is to clean with her bare hands the village latrines, just like her mother before her. Her dream is to see her daughter escape this same fate, and learn to read. When this hope is shattered, she decides to run away with the child, despite her husband’s warnings, sacrificing what is most precious to her: her hair. Sicily. Giulia is a worker in her father’s wig workshop, the last of its kind in Palermo. She classifies, washes, bleaches, and dyes the hair provided by the city’s hairdressers. When her father is the victim of a serious accident, she quickly discovers the family company is bankrupt. Canada. Sarah is a reputed lawyer. As a twice-divorced mother of three children, she ploughs through cases at breakneck speed. Just as she is about to be promoted, she learns she has breast cancer. Her seemingly perfect existence begins to show its cracks... But this is only if one ignores the incredible lust for life that keeps her going. Through one woman’s hair, the three women’s destinies will combine… Laetitia Colombani comes from the world of film, where she worked as a screenwriter-director, and actress. She also writes for the stage. La Tresse is her first novel. Foreign Rights sold: Arabic (Arab Cultural Centre), Castilian & Catalan (Salamandra), Chinese simplified (People’s Literature Publishing House), Croatian (Znanje), Czech (Euromedia), Danish (Arvids Forlaget), Dutch (Ambo Anthos), Estonian (Varrak), German (S. Fischer Verlag), Greek (Patakis), Hebrew (Kinneret), Hungarian (Kossuth), Icelandic (Forlagid), Italian (Nord c/o Mauri Spagnol), Japanese (Hayakawa), Korean (Balgunsesang), Lithuanian (Alma Littera), Norwegian (Arneberg Forlag), Polish (Literackie), Portuguese (Bertrand Editora), Portuguese – Brazil (Intrinseca) , Romanian (Trei), Russian (Eksmo), Serbia (Laguna), Slovak (Ikar), Swedish (Sekwa), Turkish (Yan Pasaj Yayınevi), Ukrainian (Hemiro), Vietnam (AZ Communication & Culture), World English (Picador - MacMillan)

Film rights sold “Admirably structured and written, this novel is an ode to solidarity, to the combative spirit of women, and to universality of their courage. Laetitia Colombani succeeds in creating a link between her characters – but, most of all, between us and them.” Version Femina “Read this simply and beautifully written novel. Recommend it. Offer it. You will braid together so many friends.” Le Parisien

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Les Passagers du siècle PASSENGERS OF THE CENTURY

Viktor Lazlo January 2018 — 336 pages UPMARKET/COMMERCIAL FICTION

Les Passagers du siècle is an epic saga spanning five generations and three continents, taking us from the War of 1870, to WWI, and finally to WWII. Following the haphazard destinies of the story’s characters, it weaves together two of the greatest tragedies of the 19th and 20th centuries: the slave trade and the Holocaust. An adaptation into a TV series is in the works. On one side of the world, there is the bloodline of Yamissi, who was born in 1850 on the banks of the Ubangi River, torn away from her family, sold as a slave on the island of Gorée, in Senegal, and sent across the Atlantic in the hold of the last slave ship to Cuba. She is bought in Santiago by the auctioneer himself, a Polish man by the name of Ephraim Sodorowski, who has fallen in love with her. But the instability of the War of Independence sends them back to Europe… On the other side, there is the bloodline of Izaak Wotchek: a Polish Jew born in a tiny village near Bialystock – home to many political utopias (the Bund, anarchist movements, etc.) and the many tragedies that would eventually decimate the Jewish families of Mitteleuropa. In a Danzig brothel, in 1906, Izaak’s son, Samuel Wotchek, and Josefa, Yamissi’s daughter, will meet and fall in love. Both believe they can start a new life in Martinique… But how long can anyone turn their back to the suffering of family and friends on the other side of the globe? Many novels have tackled the slave trade, and countless are the works whose central theme is the tragedy of the Shoah, but a novel of such great ambition, embracing this doubly horrifying experience, has no equivalent in the French literary landscape. Viktor Lazlo is a singer, actress and writer. She has published La Femme qui pleure (2010, winner of the Prix Charles Brisset), My Name is Billie Holiday (2012) and Les Tremblements essentiels (2015). ‘An ambitious fresco containing myriad destinies in motion [which] ultimately combine to produce a grand tapestry of human strengths and frailties.’ L’Arche ‘Viktor Laszlo’s sensitive story takes the reader on a long, exciting and challenging journey. Télé Loisirs ‘[A] bold and original idea.’ Le Soir ‘A novel you will read in a single sitting, and proof that Viktor Laszlo’s very broad talents cannot be pigeonholed.’ Bretagne Actuelle Under option for a TV series adaptation

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NON FICTION

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La Ruée vers l’Europe THE SCRAMBLE FOR EUROPE

Stephen Smith February 2018 — 240 pages HIGHLIGHT

Impeccably researched, informative and superbly written, Stephen Smith’ new book confronts head-on one of the most polarizing global issues: mass migration in the age of nativist populism and radical humanitarianism. Against the either-or of fortresses vs. open houses, it argues in favor of migratory policies that are hard but accountable choices, and strike a balance between interest and compassion. The Scramble of Europe is the result of years of research by one of the leading experts on contemporary Africa. Today, 510 million people live inside EU borders, and 1.25 billion people in Africa; Europeans are rapidly aging whereas 40 percent of the Africans are under fifteen; in 2050, a little more than thirty years, 450 million Europeans will face 2.5 billion Africans, five times their number. Between now and 2100, three out of four newborns on this planet will see the light of day south of the Sahara. The demographics are implacable. The scramble for Europe will become as inexorable as was the “scramble for Africa” at the end of the 19th century when 400 million people lived north and only 200 million south of the Mediterranean. In its age of industrialization, Europe conquered Africa, a sparsely populated continent more than six times its size. Then it was all about raw materials and national pride (Europe’s “wretched refuse” migrated massively to America, not Africa). Now it is about young Africans seeking a better life on the Old Continent, the island of prosperity within their reach. If Africa’s migratory patterns follow the historic precedents set by other less developed parts of the world, Europe will count in thirty years at least 150 million Afro-Europeans (against nine million today). A fifth, perhaps a quarter, of its population – and a much higher percentage of its youth - will be of African origin. Can Europe cope with an influx of that magnitude? What will such a “Eurafrica” look like? Were the British wise, or ill-advised, to delink their fate from the continent? Stephen Smith defuses Europe’s ideological landmine. A longtime Africa correspondent with forty years of on-the-ground experience, the former Africa Editor of Le Monde and now a professor of African Studies at Duke University, he douses political incendiarism but also “demoralizes” pharisaical humanitarianism with facts and figures. In its conclusion, the book outlines and discusses the five most plausible scenarios for Europe’s future. Translation rights sold: English (Polity Press), German (Fototapeta), Italian (Einaudi), Spanish (ARPA Editores) ‘Is the stampede to Europe inevitable? Based on the demographic “law of big numbers”, Smith’s answer is yes. And he has written an essential contribution to our understanding of one of the major challenges of the coming decades.’ Le Point ‘We still don’t know what the relationship between Africa and Europe is going to look like. Stephen Smith explores five possible scenarios, from the most optimistic to the most pessimistic […]. Only one thing is certain. An essential part of Europe’s fate hinges on its relationship with Africa, whether we like it or not.’ Le Monde 46

Un temps pour haïr HATE

Marc Weitzmann October 2018 — 512 pages HIGHLIGHT

From an award-winning journalist, a provocative, deeply reported exposé of the history and present crisis of anti-Semitism in France—and its dire consequences for the rest of Europe Hate explores the alarming history and present predicament of anti-Semitism in France. By examining the issue at local, international, and personal levels—interviewing everyday French men and women as well as powerful leaders such as National Front president Marine Le Pen— Weitzmann attempts to understand how nine Jews have been murdered by French citizens in the last eight years, and how France has become the number one country from which Western jihadists flee to join ISIS and other extremist Middle Eastern organizations. How do contemporary French Jews grapple with these troubling facts, and with the historical legacies of the French Revolution, the Holocaust, and the Gaullist “Arab-French policy”? While internationally minded consumers of the news may have some knowledge of the events Weitzmann describes—including the 2013 “Day of Anger” and the rise of France’s popular, and famously anti-Semitic, comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala—these controversies are largely unknown in the States, and utterly shocking in the unity Weitzmann gives them here. In his hands, these events are not just the story of French anti-Semitism, but that of the breakdown of a major Western power, of the dark side of our global age. This book, which re-examines the paths taken by several characters, described with a novelist’s voice, is as striking for the sweeping breadth of its expansive portrait as it is for its form. The author is not trying to provide a definitive dogmatic explanation, but rather wishes to guide the reader in meditating the role of images and ideology.

Marc Weitzmann is a novelist and regular contributor to several periodical papers, including Le Monde and Tablet. He is also the author of Une matière inflammable, Mariage mixte, Fraternité and Une place dans le monde.

An English edition will be published in March 2019 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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La petite fille sur la banquise THE LITTLE GIRL ON THE ICE SHEET

Adélaïde Bon March 2018 — 280 pages AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LITERATURE In this debut book, written with wonderful literary poise, Adélaïde Bon revisits the rape she was subjected to when she was 9 years old and describes the years of suffering, solitude and struggle that followed, until she finally confronted her attacker 20 years later during his trial. This is not only essential reading, but also a call for the law to be amended and for the treatment of survivors to be improved. In Europe, one child in every five is abused sexually, but only ten percent of these abuses is ever reported to the police. One Sunday in May, as she was on her way back home from the end-of-year school party, 9-year-old Adélaïde fell prey to a paedophile. When she got home, she told her parents what had happened to her and they took her to the police station to report it. And then the years passed, the family tried to put the incident behind them, and nobody spoke of it any more. But for Adélaïde, life would never be the same again… The little girl grew up, but she was acting a role. The more gregarious and gay she was in public, the more profoundly depressed she was in private. She sought solace in eating, suffered from bulimia and gained a lot of weight. In her adolescence, her first sexual experiences were a source of great suffering. Adélaïde rejected her own body and could not bear the desire it aroused in her partners. There followed many years of struggling with her own personal demons. Adélaïde signed up for a theatre school and found a relief in acting, while at the same time trying every kind of therapy, from psychoanalysis and victim support groups to voice yoga. By the time she was about 30, she had found a kind of balance, had married and was pregnant. But when her son was born, it revived her former anguish. One winter’s evening, Adélaïde got a call from the police child abuse unit. 23 years had passed since her rape… A female police investigator had re-opened the “electrician” cold case and DNA evidence indicated that a burglar with a long criminal record was the culprit. He was thought to have abused 72 minors between 1983 and 2003, and a hundred little girls who had been in no position to report what had happened to them. In spring 2016 at the Palais de Justice in Paris, alongside 18 other young women, Adélaïde confronted the serial rapist who had destroyed her life. Adélaïde Bon was born in 1981. La petite fille sur la banquise is her first book.

Foreign rights sold for this title: Castilian (Anagrama), Czech (No Limit), English (UK: MacLehose Press|USA: Europa Editions), German (Hanser Berlin), Italian (Edizioni E/O)

“An exceptionally powerful account without an ounce of self pity. Every teenager should read this book. And every magistrate. And every politician. And every person who whishes to make a change in the world. Striking ! What a hymn to the healing powers of writing ! “ La Grande Librairie

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Le Chagrin d’aimer THE SORROW OF LOVING

Geneviève Brisac March 2018 — 162 pages AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LITERATURE

To write her previous book, Vie de ma voisine, Geneviève Brisac spent hours listening to her heroine Jenny Plocki talk about her mother, the splendid Rifka. This prompted her to reflect on her own mother, the relationship she had with her and her mother’s own life story, which she was largely ignorant of. And so she decided to do some research… Evangelina Metaxas and Boghossian Missirlibey met each other in Paris in 1924. Born in Athens and raised in the Ursuline convent in Brussels, the young woman worked as a singer and actress under the pseudonym Lina de Varennes. Her husband was an Armenian from a rich Catholic family in Constantinople, but his mother disinherited him after his marriage to Evangelina, who was an Orthodox Christian. Impoverished but madly in love, they settled down in Paris and a few years later had Jacqueline, Geneviève Brisac’s mother. Boghossian died in 1947, plunging his wife into a deep depression. The teenage Jacqueline’s ambition was to study philosophy at the Sorbonne, but she had to earn a living and so trained as a shorthand typist. She got married and soon had a baby, but she struggled with the constraints of family life and took refuge in reading and writing. She bought a typewriter and started to work in radio and television, writing serials, radio plays and detective series and eventually she became a director. Devoting most of her time to her work and to her many lovers, she somewhat neglected her daughters. In this book, Geneviève Brisac composes a portrait of her mother – a complicated woman who was often absent, but who was also a fascinating and extremely loveable person…

Geneviève Brisac is the author of many books, including Une année avec mon père (2010), Dans les yeux des autres (2014) and Vie de ma voisine (2017).

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L’amour après LOVING AFTERWARDS

Marceline Loridan-Ivens January 2018 — 128 pages AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LITERATURE

Her previous book, Et tu n’es pas revenu, has been acknowledged as an important addition to the library of the Holocaust, was translated into eighteen languages and awarded several prizes (notably the National Jewish Book Award). Marceline LoridanIvens returns with a powerful text about a hitherto unexplored subject: love, sexuality and the relationship to one’s body after surviving a concentration camp. With the participation of journalist Judith Perrignon, she exposes the pages of her past loves, and returns to the different encounters that have impacted her life, as well as her difficulty to love and experience pleasure after living through hell. “I lost my sight in Jerusalem. I don’t believe God had anything to do with it. But it happened there, quite suddenly, just like that. And I couldn’t help but look for some meaning in it.” Condemned “to darkness until her last days,” Marceline Loridan-Ivens looks deep within herself, remembers, and reveals. With her friend and writing partner, Judith Perrignon, she opens her “suitcase of love”, the receptacle in which Marceline has stored her hidden and forgotten love letters and notes, but also painful letters, drawings, and more – all written after since her return from Birkenau in 1946. A life filled with love and emotion, but also with intellectual and sexual liberation, and a past that refuses to remain buried. Is it possible to love, desire and experience sexual bliss after surviving a concentration camp? Or does one forever remain the “girl from Birkenau”? Throughout these delightfully free, sensual and harsh pages, we dive into post-war Paris. We discover a husband, Francis, who was loved then abandoned in the former colonies; lovers that were joyful, angry, or hopeful, like Georges Pérec, whose portrait presides in one part of Marceline’s home; men who were just passing through; her dearest and most tender of friends, Jean-Pierre; and of course, the great documentarian film maker, Joris Ivens, who would become her second husband and share thirty years of her life. Marceline is magnificent, lucid, provocative, political, and ageless. Today, with L’amour après, she offers us a stunning text, and a beautiful lesson in life and love. Marceline Loridan-Ivens is a screenwriter, director, and writer. Her critically acclaimed book, Et tu n’es pas revenu (2015), was a great success and translated throughout the world. Rights sold: Czech (No limits) Rights sold for Et tu n’es pas revenu : German (Suhrkamp), English (US: Grove Atlantic, UK: Faber & Faber, Canada : Penguin Random House), Castilian (Salamandra), Catalan (Bromera), Chinese complex (Locus), Chinese simplified (Henan UP), Danish (Rosinante), Finnish (Gummerus), Greek (Patakis), Hungarian (21st Century), Italian (Bollati Boringhieri), Norwegian (Spartacus), Dutch (De Bezige Bij), Polish (Proszynski), Portuguese (Brasil : Intrinseca), Slovakian (Vydavate 318 Stvo), Swedish (Natur Och Kultur), Czech (No limits) 50

L’amour après LOVING AFTERWARDS

Marceline Loridan-Ivens January 2018 — 128 pages AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LITERATURE

PRESS REVIEWS

‘A splendid book.’ La Grande Librairie ‘Incredibly moving. A book about love, conquests and the rediscovering of every form of freedom.’ France Inter

‘You want to underline every line and quote every phrase in these densely packed 157 pages. And also to salute the achievement of co-writer Judith Perrignon - a fine style and an exceptional ability to listen and to transpose Marceline’s words into beautiful prose.’ Le Figaro Littéraire ‘Marceline Loridan-Ivens possesses such a creative and innovative power […], it is infused with freedom in all its forms. She serves up an unforgettable lesson in life, expressed in an arresting style.’ Livres Hebdo

‘This intense and electrifying book is the story of a rebellious woman’s determination to live and to love, forever unvanquished by her past.’ Transfuge ‘Freedom regained and love discovered; a survivor’s gradual rebuilding of her life.’ Le Monde des Livres ‘The story of a young girl’s, and a survivor’s, efforts to reconcile life and death.’ Libération ‘Georges Perec, Edgar Morin… With her trademark boldness and sincerity, she thanks them for having understood that she was untouchable and impregnable.’ L’Obs ‘A condensed dose of flamboyant energy, like her hair, her laughter and her story.’ Le Journal du Dimanche

‘She discerningly shares with us her often amusing, cheeky and intrepid memories, her forthright reflections, and her pleasures.’ Elle

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Journal d’Irlande AN IRISH DIARY : NOTES ON FISHING AND ON LOVE

Benoîte Groult April 2018 — 420 pages AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LITERATURE

Journal d’Irlande was the final project of Benoîte Groult, the author of the cult novel Les Vaisseaux du coeur and a major figure of feminism, who died in 2016. It had been her intention to blend a private diary she kept in Ireland, where she spent more than twenty summers, and where took place the passionate love story that inspired her novel Les Vaisseaux du coeur. Her daughter Blandine took over the task to pay a beautiful homage to her in this posthumous book. One part of Journal d’Irlande is based on the diary that she kept for twenty-six summers and covers four major aspects of her time in Ireland: the initial arrival in the country, the house that Benoîte bought with her husband Paul Guimard, local life and its colourful characters, and of course her passion for fishing. The other part is devoted to the love triangle in which Benoîte found herself, torn between her husband and Kurt, the American lover she met in 1945 and was reunited with in the 1960s. She drifts away from Paul but can’t bring herself to leave him altogether, while Kurt hopes in vain that she will get divorced to be with him. It was this passionate love affair that inspired Benoîte to write her best-selling Les Vaisseaux du cœur. This remarkable text reads like a novel, immersing the reader in the universe of Benoîte Groult and revealing the workings of the creative mind… A journalist, novelist and feminist campaigner, Benoîte Groult published many novels, including Mon évasion, Ainsi soient-elles, Les Vaisseaux du cœur and La part des choses, all of which were bestsellers and have been translated into numerous languages. Rights sold: German (Ullstein), Dutch (Meulenhoff) Rights sold for previous works : Belarussian (Makbel), Bulgarian (Gutenbergova Galaksija), Castilian (Alianza, Grijalbo, Suma de Letras), Chinese (Aquarius, Shanghai 99, China Science, Shanghai Sanhui Culture), Czech (Praca, Knizni Klub), Danish (Rosinante, Forum), Dutch (Arena, Meulenhoff), English (US : The Other Press, Grove Weidenfeld, UK : Penguin), Finnish (Werner Soderstrom), German (Berlin Verlag, Donauland, Droemer), Greek (Livanis, Modern Times), Hebrew (Kinneret-Zmora), Hungarian (Europa, Magyar), Islandic (Frodi Boka), Italian (Longanesi), Japanese (Fusosha), Korean (Maumsanchaek, Munidang), Norwegian (Aschehoug, Arneberg), Polish (Wydawnictwo, Foksal) Portuguese (Cotovia, Distribuidora Record), Romanian (FF Press, Trei Editura), Russian (Raduga, Fluid), Serbian (Laguna), Turkish (Varlik Yayinlari)

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Les Vaisseaux du Coeur THE VESSELS OF THE HEART

Benoîte Groult March 1993 — 264 pages AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LITERATURE

Who has the secret to inventing a passion between a man and a woman which will never wither? Who has the secret, in the face of the passing time, to preserving great love affairs from the indignities of daily life? This ultimately is the secret of these two people who are drawn to each other with intense passion, despite their many differences. He is a sailor from Brittany, and she is an intellectual from Paris. They are seemingly unalike, and the conventions and habits of their respective worlds should have condemned them to being strangers to each other. Destiny offers them an improbable chance at a relationship to surpass all others with great complicity and physical intimacy, through brief encounters and scarce getaways. A few days, a few weeks, strung out across an entire lifetime are the sole but all-consuming staging posts of a love affair that begins with the contours of the body and ultimately extends deep into the heart. Through this tender and sensual passion, Benoîte Groult tells the story of a glorious love affair and of an emancipated woman. In the authentic language of indecency, she brings to life a novel about a desire that remains miraculously intact to this day. A journalist, novelist and feminist campaigner, Benoîte Groult published many novels, including Mon évasion, Ainsi soient-elles, Les Vaisseaux du cœur and La part des choses, all of which were bestsellers and have been translated into numerous languages.

Rights recently sold: English World (World Editions), Spain (Libros del Asteroide) Rights previously sold : Belarussian (Makbel), Bulgarian (Gutenbergova Galaksija), Chinese (Shanghai Sanhui Culture), Czech (Praca), Danish (Forum), dutch (Arena, Meulenhoff), Finnish (Werner Soderstrom), German (Berlin Verlag, Donauland, Droemer), Greek (Livanis), Hebrew (Kinneret-Zmora), Hungarian (Europa, Magyar), Islandic (Frodi Boka), Italian (Longanesi), Japanese (Fusosha), Korean (Munidang), Norwegian (Aschehoug), Polish (Wydawnictwo) Portuguese (Cotovia), Romanian (FF Press, Trei Editura), Russian (Raduga, Fluid), Serbian (Laguna), Turkish (Varlik Yayinlari)

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D’Annunzio le magnifique D’ANNUNZIO THE MAGNIFICENT

Maurizio Serra February 2018 — 704 pages BIOGRAPHY

With this biography on Gabriele D’Annunzio, Maurizio Serra completes his epic saga dedicated to the great Italian authors of the 20th century, which began with Malaparte, vies et légendes and was followed by Italo Svevo, ou l’antivie. These works were showered with praise by critics and the public alike, and have been translated into several languages. It’s hard to imagine today that Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938) was the most popular, the most imitated, and the most envied literary figure of his time. Henry James, George-Bernard Shaw, Stefan George, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Karl Kraus, Hugo van Hofmannsthal, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Musil, James Joyce, D. W. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Bertolt Brecht, Jorge Luis Borges, Jean Cocteau, Paul Morand, Marguerite Yourcenar... three generations of intellectuals read, studied and copied him, at the risk of renouncing or forgetting him thereafter. Unfairly, a legend flourished around this unconventional man, whose versatile talent, exceptional vitality, physical courage, and love of transgression in all domains, remains irresistibly reminiscent of Picasso’s Minotaur. This book proposes an opportunity to rediscover him as he was. In fact, D’Annunzio was not, by turns, a poet, novelist, playwright, seducer who made headlines, aviator, war hero, condottiere, Comandante in Fiume and, for the last seventeen years of his life, a wilful recluse in his Vittoriale palace by Lake Garda. From the beginning, and right up to the end, he was an action poet, composed of all these elements, a bard uplifted by movement, paralysed by withdrawal, and destroyed by inertia. Not an adventurer, but a true prince of adventure, and precursor of Lawrence of Arabia, Saint-Exupéry, Malraux, and Romain Gary, all of whom took him as inspiration. Maurizio Serra is a diplomat and writer. He has published several works, including Malaparte, vies et légendes (2011, winner of the Prix Goncourt for Biography and the Prix Casanova) and Italo Svevo ou l’antivie (2013). Rights sold for previous works: Castillan Spanish (Tusquets, Forcola), Italian (Marsilio, Nino Aragno Editore), Serbian (JP Sluzbeni Glasnik) ‘Maurizio Serra dusts the platinum off the sphinx to reveal in refreshingly concise prose a collection of admirable writings which foreshadow the desiccation of modern literature.’ Le Point

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Salutations révolutionnaires Quatre ans de parloir avec Carlos REVOLUTIONARY GREETINGS FOUR YEARS OF VISITATION DISCUSSIONS WITH CARLOS THE JACKAL

Sophie Bonnet October 2018 — 320 pages POLITICS/SOCIAL ISSUES

A symbol of international terrorism, public enemy number one for Western governments in the decade spanning 1970 - 1980, Carlos was finally arrested in 1994 and sentenced to life imprisonment. For four years, investigative journalist and archivist Sophie Bonnet visited him every month in order to understand this living myth to write a book and make a documentary. Every month, she meticulously wrote down their discussions in a tiny

notebook. Born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez in 1949 in Venezuela, Carlos was an admirer of Che Guevara, a mad revolutionary theorist, a great seducer and party animal with very expensive tastes. He also worked for Eastern European countries, for Palestinians, and Syrians, organizing terrorist attacks that resulted in over 80 victims. Several spring to mind: the attack on the Drugstore SaintGermain and rue Marboeuf, in Marseille’s Saint-Charles train station, his close ties to the BaaderMeinhof Gang... And, perhaps his most spectacular operation: taking hostages at a OPEP leaders meeting in Vienna in 1975. But, all the harder was his fall. For the past 24 years, he has been confined to a tiny cell, with no one by his side, Carlos is now all alone with no ties to anyone outside prison and now devotes all his energy to keeping his legend alive. Today, certain radicalized youth see him as a model because he was the first Western terrorist to convert to Islam and set off bombs for the Arab cause. Carlos’ life has inspired several films, including Olivier Assayas’s 2010 biopic. Nicknamed “The Jackal,” he has left an elusive and mysterious reputation in his wake. A blood-thirsty monster? A compulsive liar? A puppet in a geopolitical game? Few are those who know the man hiding behind “The Jackal.” Few are those who have met, frequented, and questioned him. Sophie Bonnet’s account is, therefore, all the more revelatory of his personality and history. Cultured and incredibly intelligent, this great manipulator proves to be heartless, but also humorous, sometimes seductive, sometimes aggressive, and very dominant throughout his four years of monthly meetings with Sophie Bonnet. Gradually, the mask slips and “the Jackal” begins to reply and open up. He tells her about his “career” then his fall, manipulation, omnipotence, and cruelty… Salutations révolutionnaires is not a simple biography of Carlos. It questions the relationship between two people – whom, at first glance, have nothing in common – and proposes a fascinating immersion in the prison world. For the past ten years, Sophie Bonnet has directed investigative documentaries, for example, “Charity Business: les dérives de l'aide humanitaire” (2012); “Laboratoires pharmaceutiques: un lobby en pleine croissance” (France 2, 2012); “Textiles: Mode toxique?” (2013); “Alerte au mercure” (2014). She is also the author of Bordel (2012). The documentary film resulting from her prison visits, Carlos, écrou 8518 will be broadcast on French TV this fall and has already been sold to several countries. 55

Iran : J’accuse ! Chahdortt Djavann October 2018 — 96 pages POLITICS/SOCIAL ISSUES

In this thought-provocative essay, Chahdortt Djavann takes to task the Iranian diaspora that supports the current government, showing how, according to her sources, Islamist ideology was created, developed and exported by the regime in Tehran. A radical and politically forthright text which is likely to spark a polemic upon publication, inspired by Emile Zola’s J’Accuse. For over ten years, Chahdortt Djavann has been seeking to raise public awareness about the repercussions of the Iranian nuclear crisis through a series of articles published in the French press. Since the accord was signed between Iran, the United States and five other major powers in July 2015, the situation has deteriorated in both the Middle East and Europe, which has suffered a string of deadly terrorist attacks. Is this a simple coincidence? In this pamphlet, the author scrutinises the Iranian regime, its policies, its objectives and its actions. Analysing the facts, she shows that: -

-

The regime’s goal is to possess nuclear weapons, and this ambition dates back to the time of the Shah. Investment in nuclear energy for civil and military purposes has been inimical to the interests of the Iranian people and has engendered a major environmental disaster in Iran, a seismically active country of vast arid regions. Islamist ideology originated in Iran where back in the early 1980s Ayatollah Khomeini would repeatedly declare: ‘We will export Islam to the rest of the world.’ The Iranian diaspora based in the West has for the last thirty years been proclaiming that the regime is changing, but in fact no reforms have been introduced in Iran for nearly forty years.

Chahdortt Djavann is a novelist and essayist. She has published a dozen books, including Bas les voiles (2003), La Muette (2008), Je ne suis pas celle que je suis (2011), La dernière séance (2013), Big Daddy (2015) and Les putes voilées n’iront jamais au paradis (2016), Comment lutter efficacement contre l’idéologie islamique (2016).

Rights sold for previous books: Dutch (De Bezige Bij)

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Une vie de cinéma A LIFE IN FILMS

Jean-Jacques Annaud et Marie-Françoise Leclère October 2018 — 528 pages ART/CINEMA

This is the incredible career of one of France’s greatest, most highly awarded filmmakers, who has directed some of the most successful international productions in cinema – The Name of the Rose or Seven Years in Tibet, to name just two: Jean-Jacques Annaud. He is also the director behind the TV series adapted from Joël Dicker’s international bestseller, La Vérité sur l’affaire Harry Quebert. From the age of nine, Jean-Jacques Annaud knew he wanted to be a filmmaker. Today, his objective has been reached and his films continue to be the stuff of dreams for millions of viewers around the world. Une vie de cinéma returns to his surprising career. Raised in a modest home, his father was a railway worker and his mother a secretary. But Jean-Jacques Annaud was extremely determined and began studying cinema and literature. He then cut his teeth in making commercials, becoming one of the industry’s stars with over five hundred ads under his belt. In 1976, his first film, La victoire en chantant (Black and White in Color) won him the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Since then, he has never stopped shooting feature films in all four corners of the world. Ever the tireless traveller, he has shot in the Ivory Coast, Canada, Argentina, Germany, Kenya… The only thing that matters to him is the theme, which he strives to make universal, thus making him, without a doubt, the most international of French filmmakers. Jean-Jacques Annaud is also a remarkable director of actors, who has worked with the greatest among them (Patrick Dewaere, Sean Connery, Jude Law, Brad Pitt) while also revealing many unknown talents. Filled with anecdotes, this book unveils a few secrets and lets the reader in on the demands and follies of filmmaking. By telling us about his life, Jean-Jacques Annaud writes a chapter in the history of world cinema.

Jean-Jacques Annaud was awarded the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1976, four Césars, and several other prizes in festivals throughout the world, making him an international star. He has been a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts since 2007. Marie-Françoise Leclère is a journalist and literary critic. She has worked for ELLE and Le Point. In 1994, she was a member of the jury for the Cannes Film Festival. She is a long-time friend of Jean-Jacques Annaud’s.

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Le Pouvoir sur ordonnance : Ces drogués qui ont fait le 20e siècle PRESCRIPTION POWER: THE JUNKIES THAT MADE THE 20TH CENTURY

Tania Crasnianski October 2017 — 336 pages HISTORY After the success of Enfants de Nazis (translated into twelve languages), Tania Crasnianski explores the relationship that the eight most powerful men of the 20th century – Hitler, Mao, Mussolini, Pétain, Churchill, Franco, Kennedy and Stalin – had with their doctors, and with drugs. This disturbing quest seeks to explore the deepest cracks in the men responsible for the last century... Hitler, Mao, Mussolini, Pétain, Churchill, Franco, Kennedy, Stalin: the lives of what were perhaps the 20th century’s eight most powerful men were inseparable from the lives of their doctors – men who became constant crutches, prescribers of drugs and vital confidants. These staff doctors had the delicate task of caring for heads of state who clung to power while their health failed them. By being responsible for the health of these leaders, and guaranteeing their capacity to govern, these doctors were the only witnesses of their private moments and weaknesses. Often discreet, and sometimes mediocre, they worked behind the scenes of statecraft and were allotted unparalleled clout. They were sometimes accused of being poisoners, éminences grises, or court jesters, and some simply pushed drugs – not always legal, and in high doses. Trust and secrecy are the foundations of these relationships. Medical confidentiality allows a sick leader to remain in power in spite of his health. But relying on a doctor turns the latter into a potential threat – just one of the many paradoxes in a very intimate yet fragile relationship. By foregrounding the co-dependency of a doctor and his famous patient, these portraits take us through the looking glass. What exactly was the nature of their relationship? Did these doctors respect their primary obligation to preserve health above all else? What is their share of responsibility in allowing sick leaders to continue leading a nation, even in a time of war?

Tania Crasnianski is a former criminal lawyer. Today, she devotes her time to writing. In 2016, she published Enfants de nazis, which has been translated into 12 languages. Foreign rights sold: Greek (Metaichmio), Italian (Mim Edizioni), Japanese (Hara Shobo), Portuguese Brazil (Autentica), Romanian (Meteor), Spanish (Spain: La Esfera de Los Libros, South America : El Ateneo) Foreign rights sold for Enfants de nazis: Complex Chinese (Business Weekly), English – world rights (Skyhorse), Italian (Bompiani), Japanese (Hara Shobo), Korean (Galapagos), Portuguese (Guerra e Paz), Portuguese - Brazil (Autentica), Romanian (Meteor), Simplified Chinese (Shanghai People Literature), Spanish (La Esfera de Los Libros), Spanish - Argentina (El Ateneo), Turkish (Opus) ‘[Tania Crasnianski] shares a fascinating autopsy of the political and medical confidentiality by gathering archives, anecdotes, biographies and testimonies, from the bedside of the20th century’s world leaders.’ L’Express‘The author discloses an exceptional documentation, and brilliantly shows the other side to the powerful men of the 20th century. […] In short, you must read Le Pouvoir sur ordonnance, a true and exciting novel.’ Les Echos ‘[Tania Crasnianski] explores the infinite complexity of human relations intricated in both history and History with a capital H. […] A deep dive behind the scenes of the power and a reflexion about the concept of transparence.’ Le Journal du Dimanche 58

Les Révoltés du Nil Une autre histoire de l’Egypte moderne AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY OF MODERN EGYPT

Mahmoud Hussein October 2018 — 480 pages HISTORY

A gripping immersion into the heart of the Egyptian Revolution and the great adventure of a people who is gradually waking up to freedom. Between 2011 and 2013, Egypt experienced an unprecedented popular revolt. In Cairo the crowds descended on Tahrir Square: a symbol of an autocratic and repressive regime, it became the crucible of the hopes of a people aspiring to freedom. There were two years of democratic ferment when the new dawn seemed to be within their grasp and the future seemed open for everybody. Although today the revolution may feel very distant, the uprising in Tahrir Square marked a decisive turning point in Egypt’s history. Fashioned by over 1,300 years of Islamic hegemony, the country witnessed the reckoning of a generation more circumspect about the religious myths of predestination and fate born out of instinctive respect for hierarchies and community conformism. A generation that is no longer afraid of originality and unforeseen situations and has learnt to assert itself, to rebel and to say ‘I’ instead of ‘we’. But this emancipation did not happen overnight - it is the result of a long process which from the time of the Napoleonic conquests to the present day has profoundly transformed Egyptian society and shaken up all of its political and mental structures. Gradually the nature of the country has changed, traditional community giving way to individual aspirations while people’s political outlook has freed itself from the yoke of the ruling classes.

Mahmoud Hussein is the joint pseudonym of Bahgat El Nadi and Adel Rifaat. Grasset has also published Al-Sîra, le Prophète de l’islam raconté par ses compagnons (2 volumes, 2005 and 2007), Penser le Coran (2009) and Ce que le Coran ne dit pas (2013).

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L’Etat contre les Juifs THE STATE VS. THE JEWS

Laurent Joly September 2018 — 380 pages HISTORY

For the government of the anti-Semitic Vichy Regime, the leeway given to police chiefs and officers was crucial. How many thousands of Jews died or survived because of one individual’s decision? Why, in the summer of 1940, did the Vichy Regime, lead by Maréchal Pétain, establish an antiSemitic policy? Why did it accept to participate in the mass deportations decided by the Nazis in 1942 and fully take over operations both in Paris and in unoccupied France? To what extent did every level of the government collaborate in this genocidal policy? L’Etat contre les juifs returns to the importance of individual choice at this moment in history. During the Vel d’Hiv Roundup, clear instructions were given: find, identify and arrest Jews. However, while certain officers broke down the doors of those missing from the roll call, others looked the other way. The operation has never been told from the point of view of the police. Laurent Joly analyzes how the smallest acts of resistance and open interpretation of the law allowed the majority of France’s Jewish community to escape death, despite being the target of a nationwide persecution. Using many unpublished sources for the first time here, Joly offers a powerful and innovative work of investigative research that has never been closer to the agents, the victims and the witnesses.

Laurent Joly is a research director and author of several books on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in France, including Vichy dans la ‘solution finale’ (2006), and L’antisémitisme de bureau (2011). He also co-wrote La police de Vichy, a documentary that won the Audience Award at the Festival de Pessac.

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Les guerres perdues de Youri Beliaev YOURI BELIAEV’S LOST WARS

Pierre Sautreuil March 2018 — 240 pages NARRATIVE NON FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX ALBERT-LONDRES DU LIVRE

Young but already award-winning political journalist Pierre Sautreuil went off into the field in Ukraine before he had even finished his Master’s in journalism. In this account of his experiences, which reads like a novel, he revisits the remarkable relationship he developed with Youri Beliaev, a former war criminal and the right-hand man of ‘Batman’, the pro-Russian battalion commander in charge of infiltration operations in eastern Ukraine. Youri Beliaev does not have the most appealing of CVs: a former cop who got involved with the mafia, a one-time millionaire, the leader of a far-right party, a veteran of the Yugoslavian war and a wanted fugitive from justice in Russia. And yet the 21-year-old freelance journalist Pierre Sautreuil, who has just arrived in Ukraine to cover the conflict in the Donbass, is intrigued by him. When they meet, the 58-year-old Youri has decided to take refuge on the Lougansk front. Pierre sees him as little more than a tired old man serving the interests of ‘Commander Batman’, a warlord who is angling for a piece of the Ukrainian pie. But very quickly, the apprentice reporter and the mercenary on the comeback trail strike up a rapport on the basis of awkward confessions, a tangible affection for each other and a certain mutual fascination. As the shelling devastates the frozen steppes, Pierre discovers and then recounts to us the improbable story a man who was prepared to do anything, including the most unspeakable things, to restore Russia to its former glory and to fulfil his own ambitions. In the course of these pages, Youri disappears, Youri goes into hiding, Youri survives an attack on his life, Youri goes to prison and Youri makes good his escape. And Pierre listens to him, gets concerned about him, and tries to understand. Is he a fascist, a neo-Nazi war criminal, or a rebel in a Russian society where every door is closed to him? Who is Youri Beliaev really? Through this portrait of a man, this colourful account of an improbable friendship, and this epic and burlesque cavalcade from the Donbass to Moscow to Kosovo to Chechnya, Les guerres perdues de Youri Beliaev paints a portrait too of a Russia which has never recovered from the collapse of the Soviet bloc. A graduate of the journalism school of Sciences Po in Paris, Pierre Sautreuil is a political reporter. Fascinated by Russia and the post-Soviet sphere, he won the Prix Bayeux-Calvados for war correspondents in 2015.

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Je ne serais pas arrivée là si… I WOULD NEVER HAVE MADE IT THIS FAR IF…

Annick Cojean February 2018 — 260 pages WOMEN’S ISSUES

Je ne serais pas arrivée là si… brings together the portraits of twenty-five international famous women – actresses, writers, intellectuals, and politicians – originally published in

Le Monde. In these interviews, journalist Annick Cojean questions each of them about the decisive encounters that helped them become the women they are today… Stories that are as surprising as they are inspiring. “I wouldn’t have made it this far if… Just a few trivial words that ask a dizzying question. What made, unmade, scarred, overwhelmed, and sculpted me? What random event, encounter, accident, character trait, book, gift, or even desire for rebellion, steered my life? What joy allowed me to spread my wings? Or perhaps what tragedy? Maybe it was something that devastated me, forced me to fight, to dive deep, and then bounce back. Did I follow a dream? Were angels watching over me? And what about my parents? Were they a burden or a stroke of luck? In a word, what are the elements that go into building a life? I asked 25 magnificent women this unfinished question, and all 25 accepted to complete it. Patti Smith and Marianne Faithfull. Virginie Despentes and Amélie Nothomb. Nicole Kidman and Claudia Cardinale. Joan Baez and the rabbi Delphine Horvilleur. Turkish writer, Asli Erdogan, and British actress, Vanessa Redgrave. Pianist Hélène Grimaud, Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, Iranian lawyer and Nobel Prize laureate, Shirin Ebadi, feminist Eve Ensler… They confess themselves with disarming sincerity. What were their main motivations? What did they learn from life? And what can they share with the young women who will read their stories, and who might also want to have their voice heard in a world where the rules are made by men?” Annick Cojean is an international correspondent for Le Monde, as well as the author of Les Proies (2012), which has been translated into 19 languages. Rights sold: German (Aufbau), Korean (Millet)

Rights sold for Les Proies : Albanian (Morava), Bulgarian (Enthusiast), Castilian spanish (Anagrama), Chinese (Populaire Orientale), Czech (No limits), Dutch (Meulenhoff Boekerij), German (Aufbau), English (Grove Atlantic), Finnish (Alligaattori Kustanus Oy), Hungarian (21st Century), Macedonian (Ars Lamina), Polish (Proszynski), Portuguese (Porto, Verus), Russian (Family Leisure Club), Swedish (Lindskog Forlag), Turkish (Pegasus)

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Lorsque je me suis relevée j’ai pris mon fusil Imaginer la violence des femmes I GOT BACK UP AND GRABBED MY GUN ABOUT FEMALE VIOLENCE

Valentine Faure September 2018 — 198 pages WOMEN’S ISSUES

Confronted with male violence, women sometimes kill to free themselves. Are they victims or perpetrators, or both at once? Is there such a thing as legitimate counterviolence? Revisiting iconic cases, Valentine Faure examines the concept of victimhood. In 2015, Jacqueline Sauvage was sentenced to ten years in prison for murdering her violent husband. The verdict outraged one segment of public opinion, while her presidential pardon scandalised another. With three rifle shots, Jacqueline Sauvage became the fact of violence against women in France. Did she commit a crime? What can women do when confronted by male violence? Is it possible to free oneself of brutality by committing the ultimate brutality? And how to respond to female violence when male violence is more firmly punished than ever before? Female violence in response to male violence is a moral conundrum. Since 1970, the notion of ‘beaten wife syndrome’ has been used to try to make sense of such acts. Valentine Faure shows how over the course of the centuries these acts have been treated as a pathology, a mystery, a monstrosity or the result of a negative influence, but rarely as a genuine threat or the expression of legitimate anger. Lorsque je me suis relevée j’ai pris mon fusil retraces the genealogy of violence against women and explores the fascinating ambiguity surrounding the question of a crime’s legitimacy. Very well researched and full of historical and personal anecdotes and contributions from experts, Valentine Faure’s essay examines a phenomenon of acute contemporary relevance at a time when the voices of women is becoming increasingly emancipated.

Valentine Faure is a freelance journalist who specialises in women’s issues. She is a regular contributor to Nouveau Magazine Littéraire and Marie Claire.

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Demeure François-Xavier Bellamy Octobre 2018 — 272 pages PHILOSOPHY

A book about our fascination with perpetual motion, the true driver of our contemporary society. Nowadays everyone has to be dynamic and mobile, and yet at the same time we have observed a form of inner exhaustion which is prompting increasing numbers of people to turn back the clock. Everywhere we are witnessing an acceleration in our individual and social lives. With modernity our civilisation appears to have entered a new era which has established motion as a universal law. If life is evolution, the economy is growth and politics is progress, everything that fails to change must disappear. Adapting, reinventing ourselves and remaining dynamic are our cardinal virtues; trends have become our principal criteria, flux has usurped being, and numbers have replaced words. With the symptom of the contemporary crisis in our Western world taking the form of an inner exhaustion, and our response to the current acceleration in technological innovation set to be the major political challenge of the coming years, it is important to analyse in depth and in concrete terms the imbalance created by this incapacity to slow down in order to rediscover what our fascination with motion has made us forget: the essence of our existence is perhaps to be found more in what is received and conveyed than in what is transformed. And what gives meaning to the changes we may bring can only be the steadiness of a goal, which is the only thing justifying our efforts in the first place. There is no spontaneous creation which takes place without roots, no journey to elsewhere that does not suppose a familiar domain, and no society which can improve itself without seeking value in what is eternal about it. What makes the motion of life possible and endows it with meaning is always what endures.

François-Xavier Bellamy is an author and a philosophy professor. His first book, Les Déshérités (2014), received very positive reviews.

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La Philosophie devenue folle La mort, l’animal, le genre PHILOSOPHY GONE MAD DEATH, ANIMAL, GENDER

Jean-François Braunstein September 2018 — 320 pages PHILOSOPHY

Why shouldn’t we change gender every morning? And why not have sex with one’s dog, or even marry it? These questions may seem absurd, and yet they are taken seriously by some American philosophers specialising in gender studies, animal rights and bioethics. In an essay likely to make waves, Jean-François Braunstein critically examines these ‘freak’ domains and pushes them to their logical conclusions in order to expose their limitations. In analysing the works of John Money, Judith Butler, Peter Singer, Donna Haraway and a number of other thinkers, Jean-François Braunstein shows that lurking behind the avowedly good intentions of these theories are propositions that are absurd and even abject. The author has dedicated many hours to picking through the thousands of pages produced by these celebrated thinkers in the Western World in order to examine their ideas, their contradictions and their individual intellectual development. He analyses, emphasises, contradicts and deconstructs. If some lives are worth living and others are not, why not eradicate the ‘infirm’ and ‘defective’ children? Why not nationalise the organs of the almost-dead for the benefit of more promising human beings? Might not the error lie, Jean-François Braunstein wonders, in seeking at all costs to ‘erase the boundaries’ between the sexes, between humans, and between the living and the dead? Is is not rather our duty to confront these boundaries which make us what we are? A fascinating and lively essay which analyses and interprets these ‘philosophers who have gone mad’ and whose disciples have proliferated in the leading universities, written in an unconstrained, personal and ironic style free of conservative thinking and moralising.

Jean-François Braunstein is a professor of contemporary philosophy at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where he lectures on the history of science, the philosophy of medicine and medical ethics. His publications incude Canguilhem, histoire des sciences et politique du vivant, L’histoire des sciences. Méthodes, styles et controverses, and La philosophie de la médecine d’Auguste Comte. Vierge Mère, vaches folles et morts vivants (PUF). “Jean-François Braunstein dives us deep into the nuclear heart of the politically correct. A witty and cheerful deconstruction that trounces the righteous minds.“ Le Figaro

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Nous US

Tristan Garcia November 2016 — 320 pages PHILOSOPHY

With Nous, Tristan Garcia – one of the new voices in French philosophy – returns to the crucial question of our identity beyond partisan ideas, and attempts a radically new way of imagining political communities. An enlightening and necessary work. In this original and rigorous book, Tristan Garcia explores the idea of “us.” More than ever before, this appears to be the term we use to construct identity, be it to claim affiliation to an ethnic group, a religious community, a social or professional class, a sexual orientation, or a generation... when, in truth, we ultimately belong to a single body of people, whether we know it or not. Supporting his argument with countless documents, pamphlets, manifestos, newspaper articles, theoretical texts or songs, the author displays the many different voices that have claimed to speak in the name of this us: “us, young people,” “us, black people,” “us, white people,” “us, Jewish people,” “us, Muslims,” “us, women,” “us, the proletariat,” “us, the decolonized,” “us, Communists,” “us, homosexuals,” “us, animals and humans…” Without any moral or political judgement, Tristan Garcia is attentive to all traditions, using them to better explore what constitutes this subjectivity: the determination of an “us,” a “you,” and a “they...” In other words, the border between friends and enemies, the formation of solidarities, and the deepening gaps between camps. In its aim to understand these phenomena – and not simply celebrate or deplore them – this essay offers an overview of collective identities that are fragmented and recomposed. He examines the different models that have come and gone, and suggests we reconstruct an idea and image of what we call “Us.” The result is a text constructed as a thrilling investigation. But, it is also a radical attempt at finding a universal form of subjectivity that might continue to keep us connected at the very moment it seems to be tearing us apart. Tristan Garcia’s career as a literary author has been acclaimed from his very first publications, winning the Prix de Flore for La Meilleure part des hommes (2008). He has also published several philosophical works, with Forme et Objet (2011), among others, and several essays, including La Vie intense (2016). Foreign rights sold: German (Suhrkamp), English (Edinburgh University Press) “A stimulating essay on collective identity in a time of fragmentation and withdrawal” Livres Hebdo “Tristan Garcia investigates how to define belonging to a community” Philosophie Magazine

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Si près, tout autre SO CLOSE YET SO DIFFERENT

François Jullien March 2018 — 234 pages PHILOSOPHY

A powerful and necessary reflection on the quest to find the Other – who, far from being a distant fantasy, is closer to us and more concrete than we might think. By nature, the Other is exterior to oneself. This supposes a gap or distance that one must cross in order to encounter this other person, who is automatically assumed to be hard to reach. Si près tout autre offers a new interpretation of otherness: we should look for it – and find it – not through opposites, but through likeness, through proximity, through everything we have in common with this Other. Can we still presuppose the existence of an “Other” that is distinctly different from ourselves at a time when we are all inclined towards greater and greater homogenization? Is the slightest gap between ourselves and someone else not enough to try to reach out and encounter him/her? This idea of proximity – essential to any reflection on existence and our relationship to ourselves – is part of François Jullien’s overall project. This work underlines the importance of encounters as decisive moments where the Other is still foreign and has yet to be assimilated. And where we might possibly be confronted with an Other, who is ultimately not so far from us. François Jullien is a philosopher, Hellenist, Sinologist, and the current Chair of Alterity at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. He is one of the most widely translated French contemporary thinkers in the world and author of many works including: Figures de l’immanence, Le Détour et l’accès, Les Transformations silencieuses, Cette étrange idée du beau and Dé-coïncidence.

Foreign rights sold: Spanish (Argentina: El Cuenco de Plata) Rights sold for previous works: Arabic (Lebanon: Sud Editions), Bulgarian (Iztok Zapad, LIK), Castilian (Siruela, Arena, Libros Perfil, Bellaterra, El Cuenco de Plata, El Hilo de Ariadna), Chinese (Peking UP, The Commerical Press, Henan UP), English (UK: Seagull Books, US : Zone Books), Estonian (University of Tallinn), German (Suhrkamp, Merve, Passagen, Turia Kant), Italian (Einaudi, Il Mulino, Feltrinelli, Raffaello Cortina, La Scuola), Japanese (Kodonsha), Korean (Hanul, Dongnyok), Portuguese (Brazilian: Discurso Editorial, Editora 34; Portugal: Instituto Piaget), Russian (Progress-Tradition, Moscow Philosophy Foundation, Salikov & Co.), Vietnamese (Da Nang Publishing House)

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Dé-coïncidence DE-COINCIDENCE

François Jullien September 2017 — 162 pages PHILOSOPHY

In this new work, François Jullien develops the concept of “de-coincidence” as a way to explain the origins of art and existence... We would like to believe that happiness is the result of things finally coming together... And yet, when things perfectly match, coincide, and eventually stabilize, this harmony quickly becomes sterile. Coincidence is death. De-coincidence, however, offers the possibility of life. The simple act of living is one of constant de-coinciding. God de-coincided with himself by dying on the Cross to promote life. Although the Classical Age presented harmony as the very definition of Truth, and coincidence with Nature as the guideline for both art and morality, it was up to modernity to break with this comfortable vision of the world. The author shows examples of “de-coincidence” in the Bible (Garden of Eden), the Gospels (John), painting (Picasso), literature (Flaubert, Proust, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Lautréamont), philosophy (Descartes, Rousseau, Heidegger, Husserl, Spinoza, Hegel, Derrida).

François Jullien is a philosopher, Hellenist and Sinologist. He occupies the “Chair of Alterity” at the FMSH (Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme), and is one of the most translated contemporary thinkers in the world. He is also the author of several works, including: Figures de l’immanence, Detour and Access, The Silent Transformations, This Strange Idea of the Beautiful, all translated into many languages.

Foreign rights sold: German (Turia+Kant), Italian (Feltrinelli), Spanish (Argentina: El Cuenco de Plata) Foreign rights sold for previous works: Arabic (Lebanon: Sud Editions), Bulgarian (Iztok Zapad, LIK), Castilian Spanish (Siruela, Arena, Libros Perfil, Bellaterra, El Cuenco de Plata, El Hilo de Ariadna), Chinese (Peking UP, The Commercial Press, Henan UP), English (UK: Seagull Books), Estonian (Tallinn University), German (Sequenzia, Merve, Passagen, Turia Kant), Italian (Einaudi, Il Mulino, Luca Sossella, Raffaello Cortina, La Scuola), Japanese (Kodonsha), Korean (Hanul, Dongnyok), Portuguese (Brazilian: Discurso Editorial, Editora 34; Portugal: Instituto Piaget), Russian (Progress-Tradition, Moscow Philosophy Foundation, Salikov & Co.), Vietnamese (Editions de Danang)

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Une seconde vie A SECOND LIFE

François Jullien February 2017 — 198 pages PHILOSOPHY

Everyone has two lives, and the second one begins when they realize they only have one. In this new essay, François Jullien analyzes this moment of rupture where one exists, suddenly, fully conscious of one’s existence. It is the birth of a new life inside life itself. In essence, a wonderful stroke of luck. There is one question that is impossible to avoid with the passage of time: why do I choose to continue living? And there are a thousand ways to reply. But the simplest answers are never satisfying. Confronting it philosophically, however, allows one to find a more ambitious understanding, and a chance to draft an idea of a “second” life. In order to reach this, one must think of truths – not ones that have been demonstrated, but ones decanted from life itself. Proving to oneself, by using accumulated experience, that one can try again. Striving to accept lucidity, this negative knowledge that comes to us despite ourselves. Catching a glimpse of a clear horizon, a second love – one not founded on possession, but on the infinite nature of the intimate.

François Jullien is a philosopher, Hellenist, and Sinologist, and occupies the Chair of Alterity at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. He is one of the most widely translated contemporary thinkers in the world, and author of several works, among which are: Figures de l’immanence, Le Détour et l’accès (Detour and Access), Les Transformations silencieuses (The Silent Transformations), Cette étrange idée du beau.

Foreign rights sold: Italian (Feltrinelli), Spanish (Argentina: El Cuenco de Plata) Foreign rights sold for previous works: Arabic (Lebanon: Sud Editions), Bulgarian (Iztok Zapad, LIK), Castilian (Siruela, Arena, Libros Perfil, Bellaterra, El Cuenco de Plata, El Hilo de Ariadna), Chinese (Peking UP, The Commerical Press, Henan UP), English (UK: Seagull Books), Estonian (Université de Tallin), German (Sequenzia, Merve, Passagen, Turia Kant), Italian (Einaudi, Il Mulino, Luca Sossella, Raffaello Cortina, La Scuola), Japanese (Kodonsha), Korean (Hanul, Dongnyok), Portuguese (Brazilian: Discurso Editorial, Editora 34; Portugal: Instituto Piaget), Russian (Progress-Tradition, Moscow Philosophy Foundation, Salikov & Co.), Vietnamese (Editions de Danang)

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L’Empire et les cinq rois THE EMPIRE AND THE FIVE KINGS

Bernard-Henri Lévy March 2018 — 250 pages PHILOSOPHY

The Western World, or the ‘Empire’, is in decline. And in this book, Bernard-Henri Lévy explores what consequences this will have for the ‘five kings’, namely for the five emerging powers (Ottoman, Persian, Arab, Chinese and Russian) who are taking advantage of this situation to return to the centre stage and to impose their own order. The ‘Empire’ which Bernard-Henri Lévy sees collapsing is America, or more precisely the Western World as a whole. In the first part of this book, the author details some of the discreet, almost invisible events that have come on dove’s feet and upended the course of History since Antiquity. The ‘five kings’ are the five new powers (Ottoman, Persian, Arab, Chinese and Russian) whose glorious past and even their future was thought to be behind them, but which have been seizing on this collapse of the empire and the discrediting of the Western world view to assert themselves. This brief and captivating book, which surveys ancient and biblical history as well as current events and episodes in the author’s own life, paints a picture of the current state of the world, which is sadly not very reassuring. What is an ‘authoritarian dictatorship’? Why are liberal values being traduced everywhere? These are just some of the questions explored in this erudite and thought provocative book. A writer and philosopher, Bernard-Henri Lévy has published some thirty works, including the best-sellers American Vertigo, Les derniers jours de Charles Baudelaire and Le Siècle de Sartre, which have been translated into numerous languages. Rights sold: Czech (HOST), English (USA: Henry Holt Publishing) Rights sold for previous works: Arabic (Editions FMA), Bosnian (Buybook), Bulgarian (Prosorets, Paradox), Chinese (SDX Joint, Guangxi University, Central Compilation, Haitian Publishing House, Presse Commerciale), Czech (Host-Vydavatelsttvi, Jota), Dutch (Voltaire, De Geus, Bert Bakker), English (US : Crown, Melville House / UK : Polity Press, Harper Collins), German (Hanser Carl Verlag, Campus, List, Heyne, Passagen), Greek (Kedros, Exandas, Scripta), Hebrew (Hakibutz, Babel), Italian (Rizzoli, Marsilio, Il Saggiatore, Agostini Novara), Japanese (NHK, Hayakawa, Kokunbunsha, Fujiwara, Kinokuniya), Korean (Eulyoo, Woongjin Think Big, Sungkyunkwan, Golden Owl, Prometheus, Donga), Norwegian (Press, Adrian Forlag), Polish (Wydawnictwo), Portuguese (Girafa, Schwarcz, Rocco, Publifolha, Nova Fronteira, Noticias, Editore ASA, Libros do Brasil, Quetzal), Romanian (Nemira, Humanitas, Curtea Veche, Trei, Albatros, Babel), Russian (Vsiemirnaya), Spanish (Ediciones B, Seix Barral, Espasa Calpe, Tusquets, Planeta, Anagrama, Ariel, Monte Avila), Turkish (Sel, Doruk, Alkim, Agora)

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Contre-Histoire de la philosophie 10 : La pensée post-nazie A COUNTER-HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 10: POST-NAZI THOUGHT

Michel Onfray March 2018 — 400 pages PHILOSOPHY

In the tenth volume of his Contre-Histoire de la philosophie, Michel Onfray explores philosophy after the Third Reich, primarily through three great post-War intellectuals: philosopher Hannah Arendt, philosopher and historian Hans Jonas, as well as journalist and essayist Günther Anders. Much of the history of Western thought collapsed when the Nazi extermination camps were opened up in 1945. Western Reason appeared to move forward, from its first appearance in Ancient Greece to the Renaissance by way of Descartes, the 18th century, with Kant’s pure reason, and the Enlightenment. How could it possibly lead to the conflagration of NationalSocialism throughout Europe? Hannah Arendt explored this phenomenon in her analysis of totalitarianism and its plan to make humans redundant. This young Jewish woman was a student (and mistress) of Heidegger’s, whose Nazism was undeniable. Totalitarianism could not remain an enigma to her for long. Beyond the 20th century, she also examined the egalitarian French Revolution – which became the breeding ground for future totalitarianisms – comparing it to the American Revolution – which was emancipatory and led to democracy. She also examined the crisis in culture, the infantilization of adults, science without a conscience, and the crisis in education. Hans Jonas also analyzed the post-Nazi world by realizing that the planet was in danger, that biotechnology placed humanity in peril, and that political activism would have to use fear to spark awareness – and, later, hope – in the masses. Ecology is deeply indebted to him. Finally, Günther Anders, who was Hannah Arendt’s husband for a time, explored the atomic bomb, jazz, television, photography, machines, propaganda, radio, media, pollution, biotechnology, the deathly ideology behind capitalism, and concluded with the programmed obsolescence of human beings. Philosopher and essayist, Michel Onfray has published several works that have been translated throughout the world, including La Sculpture de soi (winner of the 1993 Prix Médicis), Traité d’athéologie (2005) and Le Crépuscule d’une idole (2010). Rights sold for previous works: Albanian (Albimages), Arabic (Al-Kamel), Bulgarian (Fruveg), Chinese (Boderland, Shanghai People, East China, SDX Joint, Social Science Academic), Czech (Nika Centre), Croatian (Jakic Podueztnisvo), Dutch (Kagge, Mets & Schilt, Ambo Anthos, Lemniscaat, Arbeiderspers, Voltaire), English (Australia : Melbourne UP / Canada : Penguin / US: Skyhorse, Columbia UP / UK: Serpent’s tail, Reaktion Books), Finnish (Niin & Nain), German (Campus, Piper, Merve, JG Cotta, Random House, Ritter Druck), Greek (Exandas, Indictos), Hungarian (Noran Konyvkiado), Italian (Fazi, Adriano Salani, Rizzoli), Japanese (Shin Hyoron), Korean (Ingan Sarang, Geulhangari, Jungree, Sodam & Taeil, Motive Book, Arte, Espace), Polish (Jacek Santorski, Wydawnizca), Portuguese (Martins, Rocco, Ediouro Publicaoes, Constancia, Quarteto), Romanian (Polirom, Nemira), Russian (AST), Serbian (Rad, Gradac, Tanesi), Spanish (Ediciones de la Flor, Libros Perfil, Paidos, El Cuenco de Plata, Anagrama, 1984, Naturae, Gallo Negro, Pre Texto), Swedish (Nya Doxa), Turkish (Sel, Can, Ayrinti) 71

Contre-Histoire de la philosophie 11 : L’autre pensée 68 A COUNTER-HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 11: THE OTHER PHILOSOPHY BEHIND MAY 68

Michel Onfray March 2018 — 250 pages PHILOSOPHY

In this eleventh volume of his Contre-histoire de la philosophie, Michel Onfray looks at the other currents of thought involved in the events of May 68 and stand in opposition to the more established intellectuals of French Theory – of which Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Roland Barthes were the vanguards. By studying the works of Henri Lefebvre, Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem, Michel Onfray reveals the existence of another school of thought that was also linked to the events of May 1968. There are two “1968 schools of thought.” The first made the revolts possible, and the second was made possible because of them. One is the cause, the other is the consequence. Deleuze, Foucault, Althusser, Lacan, Barthes, and several others – who later became the heroes of “French Theory” – were obedient professors before May 68, and only later became the pure products of what happened afterwards. The “other school of thought behind 1968”, which could be qualified as genealogical, is also international. To find its origins, one must look to the literary avant-garde: Futurism, Surrealism, and Lettrism. It can be found in the writings of Henri Lefebvre – a left-wing Nietzschean and Marxist hedonist who opposed magical structuralist thinking – as well as in the FreudianMarxism of Herbert Marcuse – a critic of democracy and defender of a Marxist political aesthetic. Or even Guy Debord, who mobilized the fetishism of spectacle and commodities to get a better grasp of the era, and finally Raoul Vaneigem, who promoted an aesthetic of the generative existence of overabundant life as a remedy against mutilated lives. Michel Onfray offers a fascinating analysis of this “other 68”, shining a light on a new approach to philosophical currents that would go on to influence a season of protests and dissent. Philosopher and essayist, Michel Onfray has published several works that have been translated throughout the world, including La Sculpture de soi (winner of the 1993 Prix Médicis), Traité d’athéologie (2005) and Le Crépuscule d’une idole (2010). Rights sold for previous works: Albanian (Albimages), Arabic (Al-Kamel), Bulgarian (Fruveg), Chinese (Boderland, Shanghai People, East China, SDX Joint, Social Science Academic), Czech (Nika Centre), Croatian (Jakic Podueztnisvo), Dutch (Kagge, Mets & Schilt, Ambo Anthos, Lemniscaat, Arbeiderspers, Voltaire), English (Australia : Melbourne UP / Canada : Penguin / US: Skyhorse, Columbia UP / UK: Serpent’s tail, Reaktion Books), Finnish (Niin & Nain), German (Campus, Piper, Merve, JG Cotta, Random House, Ritter Druck), Greek (Exandas, Indictos), Hungarian (Noran Konyvkiado), Italian (Fazi, Adriano Salani, Rizzoli), Japanese (Shin Hyoron), Korean (Ingan Sarang, Geulhangari, Jungree, Sodam & Taeil, Motive Book, Arte, Espace), Polish (Jacek Santorski, Wydawnizca), Portuguese (Martins, Rocco, Ediouro Publicaoes, Constancia, Quarteto), Romanian (Polirom, Nemira), Russian (AST), Serbian (Rad, Gradac, Tanesi), Spanish (Ediciones de la Flor, Libros Perfil, Paidos, El Cuenco de Plata, Anagrama, 1984, Naturae, Gallo Negro, Pre Texto), Swedish (Nya Doxa), Turkish (Sel, Can, Ayrinti)

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