Marc's World

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1. La papauté a définitivement quitté Avignon pour Rome. À Valence, en Espagne, les Borgia se préparent à mettre la main sur le gouvernement de l’Église. Rien ne les arrêtera. Deux papes Borgia occuperont le Trône de saint Pierre, mais à quel prix ! Intrigues, corruption, alliances sulfureuses, amours illégitimes, crimes, luxure, ils ne reculeront devant rien.
Qu’il s’agisse d’Alonso Borgia, devenu Calixte III, de son neveu Rodrigue, plus connu sous le nom d’Alexandre VI, ou des enfants de celui-ci, le bouillant César et la belle Lucrèce, pour satisfaire leurs ambitions les coups les plus bas sont permis. Personnages hors du commun, les Borgia vivent pourtant dans un monde qui, le Moyen Âge achevé, s’ouvre à la Renaissance. Les arts et les sciences s’épanouissent ; ils joueront un rôle prépondérant dans cette mutation. Avec Les Borgias, Claude Mossé s’attache à la longue histoire d’une famille exceptionnelle.
Une fiction conçue comme un roman policier du xvie siècle. Une fresque où, de rebondissements en événements imprévus, de la première à la dernière page, le bien et le mal s’entremêlent.

2. À l’aube du siècle nouveau, alors que Christophe Colomb repousse les frontières terrestres, que Copernic révolutionne la pensée scientifique et que Michel-Ange œuvre sur les murs de ce qui sera la chapelle Sixtine, Rodrigue Borgia, devenu Alexandre VI, ne connaît qu’une loi, celle de l’or, de la chair et du sang. Ses enfants, Lucrèce et César, commettent des crimes en toute impunité et contribuent à ce que la mémoire des hommes ne retienne du clan qu’intrigues, corruption, meurtres et orgies.

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1998, Eunsun a douze ans. La grave famine qui sévit depuis plusieurs années dans le pays a déjà fait des centaines de milliers de victimes. Parmi elles, son père et ses grands-parents. Dans l’espoir de trouver un peu de riz, sa mère et sa sœur sont parties à la ville. Mais quand elles reviennent enfin, alors que Eunsun, affamée et sûre qu’elle va mourir, a fait son testament, la joie des retrouvailles est vite éclipsée par le désespoir : elles sont rentrées bredouilles. Il ne leur reste qu’une solution : passer en Chine pour fuir la faim. Il leur faudra traverser une rivière gelée, braver les garde-frontières, survivre au froid, à l’épuisement… un pari presque impossible mais remporté. Rien n’est gagné pour autant. Elles sont d’abord vendues comme esclaves en Chine, puis renvoyées dans les geôles nord-coréennes, interrogées, torturées, « rééduquées »… pas d’autre choix que de s’évader à nouveau. Elles retournent en Chine où elles vivent dans la clandestinité, sans cesse traquées par les polices de Pyongyang et Pékin. Jusqu’au jour où, n’en pouvant plus, elles entament un nouveau périple : la traversée du désert de Mongolie à pied, pour atteindre enfin la terre promise : la Corée du Sud.
Près de quinze ans plus tard, Eunsun Kim a choisi de témoigner, pour que le monde connaisse son histoire et celle de ces milliers d’hommes et de femmes qui, chaque jour, tentent de passer la frontière pour échapper à la faim et à l’enfer totalitaire de la Corée du Nord.

EUNSUN KIM est née en Corée du Nord, le pays le plus fermé de la planète. À l’âge de douze ans, elle a fui cet État prison avec sa mère. Aujourd’hui, à 25 ans, c’est une étudiante comme les autres qui vit à Séoul. Elle raconte sa longue odyssée vers la Corée du Sud, la liberté et l’espoir d’une vie meilleure. Sébastien Falletti est journaliste, correspondant pour Le Figaro à Séoul depuis une quinzaine d’années.

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Après l’immense succès de Jésus, l’homme qui était Dieu, plus de 120 000 exemplaires vendus, Max Gallo nous offre la biographie de la plus grande héroïne de notre histoire.
À l’occasion du 600e anniversaire de la naissance de Jeanne d’Arc, qui sera célébré dans toute la France en janvier 2012, Max Gallo nous conte l’incroyable épopée de cette jeune femme hors du commun et hors des âges.

”Souvenons-nous toujours, Français, que la patrie chez nous est née du coeur d’une femme, de sa tendresse et de ses larmes, du sang qu’elle a donné pour nous…”
Jules Michelet

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Marc, un peintre d’une cinquantaine d’années, est brusquement confronté au suicide inexplicable d’Alexandre, son fils de 18 ans, lors d’une soirée.
Un an après, Marc se remet tant bien que mal de la perte de son fils. Il boit encore un peu trop. Elisabeth, sa seconde femme l’a quitté, lassée. Mais il recommence à créer, entouré et soutenu par son agent Michel et sa femme Anne — ses amis depuis 30 ans.
Un soir, Marc porte secours à une jeune fille complètement saoule. Elle casse tout chez lui avant de disparaître. Retrouvée par Michel, elle se révèle être la dernière petite amie d’Alexandre, se prénomme Gloria et n’a pas de domicile.
Espérant confusément réparer la mort de son fils, Marc lui propose de l’héberger. Gloria, sauvage, solitaire et démunie, accepte la proposition sans un remerciement ni un sourire. Michel se méfie aussitôt d’elle. Il la suspecte de vouloir se venger de Marc qu’elle estime responsable de la mort d’Alexandre. Mais ce sera Michel, la première « victime » de Gloria. Elle l’aguiche et sème la zizanie dans son couple. Dans une atmosphère de suspicion de plus en plus grande, le peintre, Gloria, l’agent et sa femme partent plusieurs fois en week-end. À la fin de l’automne, peu après l’une de ces excursions, Gloria disparaît. Elle est retrouvée trois jours plus tard dans le coma, violée et battue…
L’enquête de police échoue, mais Marc croit savoir qui a agressé Gloria et décide de se charger personnellement de le confondre.

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Le Napoléon en deux volumes d’André Castelot est l’in des plus grans succès de l’édition française dans le domaine de l’Histoire. C’est par centaine de milliers que se comptent les lecteurs de chacun d’eux. D’Ajaccio à Sainte-Hélène, en passant par le Grand-Saint-Bernard, Austerlitz, Moscou, Waterloo, l’île d’Elbe, André Castelot a mis ses pas dans ceux de Napoléon Bonaparte pour respirer et restituer le décor de son prodigieux destin. Exploitant et mettant en valeur, avec son art célèbre du récit qui visualise les évènements, les lieux et les personnages, une immense masse d’archives, de mémoires et de correpondance parfois inédits ou oubliés, il a écrit cette monumentale biographie si vivante, si colorée, si passionnante que depuis trente ans, son public se renouvelle sans cesse.

Le premier tome -Bonaparte- nous conduit de la naissance au sacre. Le second part de l’instant où, le 2 décembre 1804, l’Empereur, accomplissanr son premier geste de souverain, ceint d’une couronne le front de son épouse. Il se termine le 15 décembre 1840, quand les cendres de Napoléon, rapatriées de Sainte-Hélène, pénètrent sous le dôme étincelant des Invalides.

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Ambrose’s account of the D-Day fighting on the Normandy beaches and bluffs is unsurpassed for detail, emotion and suspense. Quoting liberally from the recollections of participants, he reveals how the massive cross-Channel effort stretched back two years and involved millions of people. He describes the choice of the site and date of the landings, the planning and special training, ship loading and embarkation, and finally the amphibious assault itself–that moment when “the Western democracies made their fury manifest.” Ambrose, director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans, interprets events as the narrative unfolds and much of what he has to say is bracing. He concludes, for example, that German military leadership was abysmal that day, even at the small-unit level; that Allied elite units such as Airborne, Rangers and Commandoes were superior in fighting ability to those the enemy had in the field; and that the German reliance on fixed defensive positions, the so-called Atlantic Wall, was one of the greatest blunders in history. Among the spate of books marking the 50th anniversary of D-Day, Ambrose’s overview will likely stand as definitive.

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Eschewing the linear, chronological approach of most biographies, Yale Law School professor and Churchill devotee Rubin (Power Money Fame Sex: A User’s Guide) has written 40 brief chapters looking at the British prime minister from multiple angles: Churchill as son, father, husband, orator, painter, historian, enemy of Hitler and many other roles. Rubin’s unique approach works surprisingly well, bringing fresh insight to an exhaustively covered subject. Writing on Churchill as son, for instance, Rubin hammers home the point that he spent his life trying to measure up to an imagined, idealized father. Churchill’s real father, Rubin makes clear, thought his son was destined for mediocrity and told him so. When she discusses Churchill’s famous gifts as an orator, Rubin contends that his speeches were sometimes overblown, overly heroic and often ignored. She agrees with David Cannadine (In Churchill’s Shadow) that Churchill’s oratory was most effective when matched by times that required heroic action, such as the spring and summer of 1940. In a chapter devoted to Churchill’s legendary drinking, Rubin provocatively presents arguments from both sides: that the drinking was harmless and that it was a major problem. In the end, Rubin sees “her” Churchill as a tragic hero. His life’s goal was to preserve the British Empire, yet his greatest achievement, the defeat of Hitler, hastened the empire’s end. While Rubin’s account clearly isn’t comprehensive and belabors a rather obvious point-that different, even opposing, perspectives on one life are possible-it is an excellent introduction to one of the most written about men in history.

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 One of the most important books and television series ever to appear, Roots, galvanized the nation, and created an extraordinary political, racial, social and cultural dialogue that hadn’t been seen since the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The book sold over one million copies in the first year, and the miniseries was watched by an astonishing 130 million people. It also won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Roots opened up the minds of Americans of all colors and faiths to one of the darkest and most painful parts of America’s past.

Over the years, both Roots and Alex Haley have attracted controversy, which comes with the territory for trailblazing, iconic books, particularly on the topic of race. Some of the criticism results from whether Roots is fact or fiction and whether Alex Haley confused these two issues, a subject he addresses directly in the book. There is also the fact that Haley was sued for plagiarism when it was discovered that several dozen paragraphs in Roots were taken directly from a novel, The African, by Harold Courlander, who ultimately received a substantial financial settlement at the end of the case.

But none of the controversy affects the basic issue. Roots fostered a remarkable dialogue about not just the past, but the then present day 1970s and how America had fared since the days portrayed in Roots. Vanguard Press feels that it is important to publish Roots: The 30th Anniversary Edition to remind the generation that originally read it that there are issues that still need to be discussed and debated, and to introduce to a new and younger generation, a book that will help them understand, perhaps for the first time, the reality of what took place during the time of Roots.

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Marilyn Monroe’s image is so universal that we can’t help but believe that we know all there is to know of her. Every word and gesture made headlines and garnered controversy. Her serious gifts as an actor were sometimes eclipsed by her notoriety—and the way the camera fell helplessly in love with her.

But what of the other Marilyn? Beyond the headlines—and the too-familiar stories of heartbreak and desolation—was a woman far more curious, searching, and hopeful than the one the world got to know. Even as Hollywood studios tried to mold and suppress her, Marilyn never lost her insight, her passion, and her humor. To confront the mounting difficulties of her life, she wrote.

Now, for the first time, we can meet this private Marilyn and get to know her in a way we never have before. Fragments is an unprecedented collection of written artifacts—notes to herself, letters, even poems—in Marilyn’s own handwriting, never before published, along with rarely seen intimate photos.

These bits of text—jotted in notebooks, typed on paper, or written on hotel letterhead—reveal a woman who loved deeply and strove to perfect her craft. They show a Marilyn Monroe unsparing in her analysis of her own life, but also playful, funny, and impossibly charming. The easy grace and deceptive lightness that made her performances so memorable emerge on the page, as does the simmering tragedy that made her last appearances so heartbreaking

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Saviano has created a perfectly realized, morally compelling journey through the brutal world of contemporary Italian mob life in this ceaselessly violent tale of the Camorra, a network of thugs, exploiters and killers who run Naples and the surrounding countryside. Armed with a police band radio, Saviano visits one crime scene after another, recording the final words and circumstances of the dying and dead. The murders described are savage, cruel and senseless: The head… hadn’t been cut off with a hatchet, a clean blow, but with a metal grinder: the kind of circular saw welders use to polish soldering. The worst possible tool, and thus the most obvious choice. Jewiss’s translation of Saviano’s intense prose flows beautifully from the pestilence and degradation of everyday life in the teeming Neapolitan slums to the futile efforts of the police to control the rich, organic chaos that is the only way the Camorra know how to live. A stunning achievement, this is a must-read for anyone interested in the state of contemporary Europe.

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This book is essential reading for all visitors to China The Author Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston was a Scottish diplomat and the tutor of Puyi, the last emperor of China. Johnston was eye witness Chinese events in the crucial years of the 1920s and 1930s. Johnston was the only foreigner in history to be allowed inside the inner court of the Qing Dynasty. The author carried high imperial titles and lived in both the Forbidden City and the New Summer Palace. In 1934, Johnston looked for a residence in Scotland to retire to. He found a house on Eilean Righ, a small island in Loch Craignish, some 9 miles (15 km) NW of Lochgilphead. He moved there with his enormous library, which included a Chinese Encylopaedia in 1734 volumes and a complete collection of Buddhist scriptures in 1500 volumes. Twilight in the Forbidden City is very much a history of an entire period and not an exclusive portrait of the last Emperor of China.Twilight in the Forbidden City is prefaced by the Emperor Hsuan-T’ung himself in the year 1931 Chosen by Dowager Empress Cixi while on her deathbed, Puyi ascended the throne at age 2 years 10 months in December 1908 following his uncle’s death on November 14.

Puyi’s introduction to emperorship began when palace officials arrived at his family household to take him. Puyi screamed and resisted as the officials ordered the eunuchs to pick him up. His wet-nurse, Wen-Chao Wang, was the only one who could console him, and therefore accompanied Puyi to the Forbidden City. Puyi would not see his real mother again for six years. Puyi’s upbringing was hardly conducive to the raising of a healthy, well-balanced child. Overnight, he was treated as a god and unable to behave as a child. The adults in his life, save his wet-nurse Mrs. Wang, were all strangers, remote, distant, and unable to discipline him. Wherever he went, grown men would kneel to the floor in a ritual kow-tow, averting their eyes until he passed.

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The family members of Nicholas II, Russia’s last tsar, were executed in July 1918, soon after the Bolshevik Revolution-and the speculation as to what exactly happened hasn’t died out during the past 85 years. In this comprehensive volume of one of history’s great intrigues, independent scholars King and Wilson stoke the flames of controversy with a creative theory: Lenin and the other Bolshevik rulers in Moscow didn’t give the orders to kill the tsar’s family, as has been believed. This wasn’t out of any sympathy for Nicholas and his family-in fact, the authors point out that Lenin was perhaps the epitome of realpolitik, allowing little emotion in his political decisions. Using an intriguing reading of the Russian archives, the authors argue that Lenin preferred a trial to an execution for fear of antagonizing the Germans, whom he wanted to appease in order to consolidate his own grip on power. Instead, it was local Bolsheviks in Ekaterinburg, where the royal family was held, who made the decision to go ahead and execute Nicholas and his family. The executions were blamed on Lenin because it served as a convenient myth for those lamenting the fall of the Romanov dynasty. While the book is somewhat longer than necessary, those fascinated with the case will find it worthwhile
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La villa est magnifique, l’été brûlant, la Méditerranée toute proche. Cécile a dix-sept ans. Elle ne connaît de l’amour que des baisers, des rendez-vous, des lassitudes. Pas pour longtemps. Son père, veuf, est un adepte joyeux des liaisons passagères et sans importance. Ils s’amusent, ils n’ont besoin de personne, ils sont heureux. La visite d’une femme de coeur, intelligente et calme, vient troubler ce délicieux désordre. Comment écarter la menace ? Dans la pinède embrasée, un jeu cruel se prépare. C’était l’été 1954. On entendait pour la première fois la voix sèche et rapide d’un ” charmant petit monstre ” qui allait faire scandale. la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle commençait. Elle serait à l’image de cette adolescente déchirée entre le remords et le culte du plaisir.

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Une femme voyage à travers le désordre des souvenirs : l’enfance dans sa cage d’or à Saigon, l’arrivée du communisme dans le Sud-Vietnam apeuré, la fuite dans le ventre d’un bateau au large du golfe de Siam, l’internement dans un camp de réfugiés en Malaisie, les premiers frissons dans le froid du Québec. Récit entre la guerre et la paix, Ru dit le vide et le trop-plein, l’égarement et la beauté. De ce tumulte, des incidents tragi-comiques, des objets ordinaires émergent comme autant de repères d’un parcours. En évoquant un bracelet en acrylique rempli de diamants, des bols bleus cerclés d’argent ou la puissance d’une odeur d’assouplissant, Kim Thúy restitue le Vietnam d’hier et d’aujourd’hui avec la maîtrise d’un grand écrivain.

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Hiver 1683. Louis XIV a quarante-cinq ans. Il est au sommet de sa puissance, et le soleil de la vie décline. Et les courtisans grelottent dans le château de Versailles aux deux mille pièces qu’on ne réussit pas à chauffer. Mais qui oserait quitter la Cour, ne plus vivre dans la proximité du grand roi, même si inexorablement l’ombre envahit le château ? La prière et les messes ont remplacé les spectacles et les ballets. Mme de Maintenon, dévote et que le roi veuf a épousée secrètement, veille. La guerre, la chasse aux protestants, la maladie, la mort des proches, rendent la vie de Cour toujours austère, parfois sinistre. C’est l’hiver du grand roi. Et dans ce long crépuscule Louis XIV révèle un courage physique et moral qui fascine. Le roi ne se laisse ni affaiblir ni terrasser. Jusqu’aux dernières heures de sa vie, il lutte. Il gouverne. Le souverain jouisseur et séducteur des débuts du règne est devenu ce roi pieux qui songe à son Salut sans jamais renoncer à être le Grand Roi. Max Gallo nous donne ici à découvrir ce souverain terriblement humain.

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14 mai 1643 : Louis Dieudonné, cinq ans, est proclamé roi de France. Louis le Quatorzième. Ce roi-enfant a un caractère inflexible. Confronté à la fronde des princes, il se forge des principes qu’il n’abandonnera jamais. Le roi doit être fort. Incarner le pouvoir. Savoir écouter. Mais, surtout, il doit être capable de commander. Max Gallo nous fait pénétrer dans l’intimité de ce monarque au grand courage physique et intellectuel. Ce séducteur auquel aucune femme ne résiste et qui restera fidèle à chacune. Cet homme, enfin, sensible aux beaux-arts et passionné de danse. Le monde de Louis XIV se dévoile – les arcanes de la cour et leur jeu mondain, la solitude de celui qui gouverne malgré la foule qui l’entoure en permanence, les blessures d’un homme qui voit la mort faucher ceux qu’il aime. C’est un Louis XIV proche et terriblement humain que Max Gallo nous donne à découvrir. Dans ce premier tome qui court jusqu’à l’apogée du règne de Louis XIV, Max Gallo peint d’une plume magistrale ce roi plein de vigueur dont la volonté s’impose à tous.

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Published to predictable international controversy, this sensational trove of documents, chronicling events leading up to and following the violent quashing of student protests in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, vividly details for the first time what previously had only been surmised. Zhang Liang, the pseudonym for the high-ranking Chinese official who leaked the documents, has revived the memory less to tell the truth than in a bid to advance political reform in China, which stalled as a result of Tiananmen Square. In that sense, the book is as much about hidden struggles now as in 1989. The Chinese government unsurprisingly has condemned it as “fabrication”, and while a post-Hitler Diaries world is understandably cautious, with experts admitting they cannot guarantee authenticity “with absolute authority”, the feeling is that the records are largely credible.What they reveal is the paranoia that gripped the Chinese rulers when the death of Hu Yaobang sparked public demonstrations that showed no signs of abating. The biggest villain appears to be former Premier Li Peng, the so-called “Butcher of Beijing”, who whinges and conspires to bring about an aggressive end to the “turmoil”. Yet it’s Deng Xiaoping, although officially long retired, who still wields most power, as he and his fellow Elders intervene to enforce martial law. The moderate Zhao Ziyang favours negotiation and dialogue, but as a consequence is crushed and replaced by Jiang Zemin, the present leader, plucked from obscurity and appointed in defiance of procedure. The gripping scenario that unfolds, in compulsive detail, is akin to parents bickering over the best way to control unruly children, with carrot or stick. Preceding a much longer Chinese edition, the American editors, Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link, have performed their duties with acuity and flair, providing a lucid commentary to link the whistle-blowing government papers, minutes of meetings, speeches, eyewitness accounts, poster text and foreign observations. The Tiananmen Papers affords a wide audience the opportunity to watch the drama unfold, blow by blow. It proves to be as brilliantly enthralling and explosive as a fictional thriller, allowing a rare snapshot of Chinese Communist Party factionalism in action, and a significant lesson that still needs to be learnt.

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How often can you peek behind the curtains of one of the most secretive governments in the world? Prisoner of the State is the first book to give readers a front row seat to the inner workings of China. It is the story of Premier Zhao Ziyang, the man who brought liberal change to that nation and who, at the height of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, tried to stop the massacre and was dethroned for his efforts. When China’s army moved in, killing hundreds of students and other demonstrators, Zhao was placed under house arrest at his home in Beijing. China’s most promising advocate for change had been disgraced, along with the policies he stood for. The Premier spent the last 16 years of his life, up until his death in 2005, in seclusion. China scholars often lamented that Zhao never had his final say. As it turns out, Zhao did produce a memoir, in complete secrecy. He methodically recorded his thoughts and recollections on what had happened behind the scenes during many of modern China’s most critical moments. The tapes he produced were smuggled out of the country and form the basis for Prisoner of the State. In this audio journal, Zhao provides intimate details about the Tiananmen crackdown; he describes the ploys and double-crosses China’s top leaders use to gain advantage over one another; and he talks of the necessity for China to adopt democracy in order to achieve long-term stability. A moving and riveting memoir, Zhao’s voice has the moral power to make China sit up and listen.

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“Connaitre mieux Hugo. Ou plutot le connaitre. Tel fut le propos de ma vie entiere. allez plus loin que le “temoin”, voire a son encontre, plus loin que la legende du poete de la Republique, de la barbe blanche et de l’art d’etre grand pere. Repudier Epinal. Retrouver le quoditien au-dela du genie. Admettre la sincerite du revolutionnaire et le compremdre bourgeois. Croire a sa generosite totale et constater son amour de l’argent. Le voir vivre en leur absolu ses passions amoureuses et asservir la meilleure des amantes. J’ai lu les lettres ou il se met a nu, celles des hommes qui l’accompagnerent, des femmes qui l’aimerent. je l’ai suivit dans Choses vues et l’ai decouvert prodigieux journaliste. Je l’ai retrouver dans les assemblees, l’ai admire chantre de la seule vraie cause, celle de l’homme, polemiste feroce pour foudroyer les interets ou ecraser les egoismes. J’ai lu les travaux innombrables d’innombrables erudits… J’ai visite les lieux ou il vecut, allant a Besanconaussi bien qu’a Guernesey, voulant voir le Donon tout autant que la Seine a Villequier, l’appartement de la place des Vosges comme la maison de Juliette. Il m’etait cher, il m’est devenue proche.”

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Controversial and compelling, “In Cold Blood” reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote’s comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible yet entirely and frighteningly human. The book that made Capote’s name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative.

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Depuis la deuxième guerre d’Irak, et même bien avant, les Etats-Unis occupent, dans l’imaginaire mondial, une place symbolique qui dépasse largement les notions de puissance, de politique, de géographie. L’Amérique, en vérité, est devenue un concept, une «région de l’âme», une matrice de passions et de phobies dont le déploiement contradictoire n’en finit pas d’infuser nos propres débats. C’est, précisément, cette réalité diverse que Bernard-Henri Lévy a voulu cerner, observer, penser, dans ce livre où le reportage se mêle à la réflexion, et où le pittoresque emprunte à la philosophie de l’histoire.

A l’origine, ce livre est né d’une «commande» de l’influent magazine Atlantic Monthly : demander à un intellectuel français de visiter l’Amérique et de donner sens à ce pays-continent en refaisant le fameux voyage qu’Alexis Tocqueville avait entrepris au début du XIXe siècle, à partir duquel il avait écrit son désormais classique De la démocratie en Amérique. Pendant une année, B.-H. Lévy a ainsi sillonné les Etats-Unis. Plus de vingt mille kilomètrès d ést èh ouest et du nord au sud, la plupart du temps par la route : de Rikers Island à Chicago, des communautés islamiques de Detroit à une enclave Amish de l’Iowa, l’auteur interroge la nature du patriotisme américain, la coexistence de la liberté et de la religion, le système pénitentiaire, la «tyrannie de la majorité», le retour en force de l’idéologie…
B.-H.L. a rencontré les visages variés de l’Amérique : les illustres, les anonymes, ceux du désert ou des mégalopoles. De Sharon Stone à une veuve de mineur du Wisconsin, d’un milliardaire philanthrope à Norman Mailer, de Woody Allen à un «homeless» de Californie, de Hillary Clinton à un contestataire turbulent, de Barack Ohama, la star montante du parti démocrate, à la pensionnaire d’un bordel du Nevada, il écrit la comédie humaine de ce pays-continent. D’où la vitalité prodigieuse de ce reportage qu’on dévore, page après page, avec un enthousiasme qui ne se dément jamais. Un oeil de romancier, et une profondeur de penseur.

Les conclusions de ce voyage ? B.-H.L. les tire en chemin, et elles sont souvent contradictoires. A l’heure où la «démocratie en Amérique» est de plus en plus contestée, ce livre atteste, au contraire, de sa prodigieuse vitalité. A cet égard, l’épilogue substantiel de ce livre permet au «philosophe» de reprendre le pas sur le «journaliste» et le final de cet ouvrage conduit son lecteur au coeur des grands débats – des thèses de Fukuyama ou Huntington aux arrières-pensées des «néo-conservateurs» – dont la complexité, bien souvent, gouverne le destin du monde

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Gandhi’s nonviolent struggles in South Africa and India had already brought him to such a level of notoriety, adulation, and controversy that when asked to write an autobiography midway through his career, he took it as an opportunity to explain himself. Although accepting of his status as a great innovator in the struggle against racism, violence, and, just then, colonialism, Gandhi feared that enthusiasm for his ideas tended to exceed a deeper understanding. He says that he was after truth rooted in devotion to God and attributed the turning points, successes, and challenges in his life to the will of God. His attempts to get closer to this divine power led him to seek purity through simple living, dietary practices (he called himself a fruitarian), celibacy, and ahimsa, a life without violence. It is in this sense that he calls his book The Story of My Experiments with Truth, offering it also as a reference for those who would follow in his footsteps. A reader expecting a complete accounting of his actions, however, will be sorely disappointed. Although Gandhi presents his episodes chronologically, he happily leaves wide gaps, such as the entire satyagraha struggle in South Africa, for which he refers the reader to another of his books. And writing for his contemporaries, he takes it for granted that the reader is familiar with the major events of his life and of the political milieu of early 20th-century India. For the objective story, try Yogesh Chadha’s Gandhi: A Life. For the inner world of a man held as a criminal by the British, a hero by Muslims, and a holy man by Hindus, look no further than these experiments.

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Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu.” Like a fairy tale, Ha Jin’s masterful novel of love and politics begins with a formula–and like a fairy tale, Waiting uses its slight, deceptively simple framework to encompass a wide range of truths about the human heart. Lin Kong is a Chinese army doctor trapped in an arranged marriage that embarrasses and repels him (Shuyu has country ways, a withered face, and most humiliating of all, bound feet. Nevertheless, he’s content with his tidy military life, at least until he falls in love with Manna, a nurse at his hospital. Regulations forbid an army officer to divorce without his wife’s consent–until 18 years have passed, that is, after which he is free to marry again. So, year after year Lin asks his wife for his freedom and year after year he returns from the provincial courthouse: still married, still unable to consummate his relationship with Manna. Nothing feeds love like obstacles placed in its way–right? But Jin’s novel answers the question of what might have happened to Romeo and Juliet had their romance been stretched out for several decades. In the initial confusion of his chaste love affair, Lin longs for the peace and quiet of his “old rut”. Then, killing time becomes its own kind of rut and in the end, he is forced to conclude that he “waited 18 years just for the sake of waiting”.

There’s a political allegory here, of course, but it grows naturally from these characters’ hearts. Neither Lin nor Manna are especially ideological and the tumultuous events occurring around them go mostly unnoticed. They meet during a forced military march and have their first tender moment during an opera about a naval battle (While the audience shouts, “Down with Japanese Imperialism!” the couple holds hands and gaze dreamily into each other’s eyes). When Lin is in Goose Village one summer, a mutual acquaintance rapes Manna; years later, the rapist appears on a TV report titled “To Get Rich is Glorious” after having made thousands in construction. Jin resists hammering ideological ironies like these home, but totalitarianism’s effects on Lin are clear:

Let me tell you what really happened, the voice said. All those years you waited torpidly, like a sleepwalker, pulled and pushed about by others’ opinions, by external pressure, by your illusions, by the official rules you internalized. You were misled by your own frustration and passivity, believing that what you were not allowed to have was what your heart was destined to embrace.

Ha Jin himself served in the People’s Liberation Army, and in fact left his native country for the US only in 1985. That a non-native speaker can produce English of such translucence and power is truly remarkable–but really, his prose is the least of the miracles here. Improbably, Jin makes an unconsummated 18-year love affair loom as urgent as political terror or war, while history-changing events gain the immediacy of a domestic dilemma. Gracefully phrased, impeccably paced, Waiting is the kind of realist novel you thought was no longer being written.

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“Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood,” writes Frank McCourt in Angela’s Ashes. “Worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.” Welcome, then, to the pinnacle of the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. Born in Brooklyn in 1930 to recent Irish immigrants Malachy and Angela McCourt, Frank grew up in Limerick after his parents returned to Ireland because of poor prospects in America. It turns out that prospects weren’t so great back in the old country either–not with Malachy for a father. A chronically unemployed and nearly unemployable alcoholic, he appears to be the model on which many of our more insulting clichés about drunken Irish manhood are based. Mix in abject poverty, and frequent death and illness, and you have all the makings of a truly difficult early life. Fortunately, in McCourt’s able hands it also has all the makings of a compelling memoir

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Hiver 1917. Cinq hommes avancent dans le secteur Bingo Crépuscule. Un no man’s land de neige souillée, entre les tranchées. Ils ont les bras liés dans le dos, il fait nuit, il fait froid et ils vont au-devant de la mort. Condamnés par l’imbécillité martiale des temps de guerre, précipités sans défense sous le feu ennemi, cinq hommes qui durant une nuit et un jour vont tenter de survivre. Parmi eux, le Bleuet, vingt ans à peine. Plus tard, la paix enfin revenue, Mathilde veut connaître la vérité. Elle aimait le Bleuet et va tout faire pour le retrouver. Vivant ou mort, qu’importe. Elle y sacrifiera sa jeunesse tout au long des années folles qui ont couvert la boucherie mondiale d’un voile trompeur.

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Condamné à mort, Meursault. Sur une plage algérienne, il a tué un Arabe. À cause du soleil, dira-t-il, parce qu’il faisait chaud. On n’en tirera rien d’autre. Rien ne le fera plus réagir : ni l’annonce de sa condamnation, ni la mort de sa mère, ni les paroles du prêtre avant la fin. Comme si, sur cette plage, il avait soudain eu la révélation de l’universelle équivalence du tout et du rien. La conscience de n’être sur la terre qu’en sursis, d’une mort qui, quoi qu’il arrive, arrivera, sans espoir de salut. Et comment être autre chose qu’indifférent à tout après ça ? Étranger sur la terre, étranger à lui-même, Meursault le bien nommé pose les questions qui deviendront un leitmotiv dans l’oeuvre de Camus. De La Peste à La Chute, mais aussi dans ses pièces et dans ses essais, celui qui allait devenir Prix Nobel de littérature en 1957 ne cessera de s’interroger sur le sens de l’existence. Sa mort violente en 1960 contribua quelque peu à rendre mythique ce maître à penser de toute une génération.

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Mass-market edition of the first authoritative single-volume biography of John F. Kennedy to be written in nearly four decades. Drawing upon first-hand sources and never-before-opened archives, prize-winning historian Robert Dallek reveals more than we ever knew about Jack Kennedy, forever changing the way we think about his life, his presidency and his legacy. Dallek also discloses that, while labouring to present an image of robust good health, Kennedy was secretly in and out of hospitals throughout his life, soill that he was administered last rites on several occasions. He never shies away from Kennedy’s weaknesses, but also brilliantly explores his strengths. The result is a full portrait of a bold, brave and truly human John F. Kennedy.

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Originally published in Switzerland, and gracefully translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway, The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her, and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany’s Nazi past, and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: What should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? “We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable…. Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?”

The Reader, which won the Boston Book Review‘s Fisk Fiction Prize, wrestles with many more demons in its few, remarkably lucid pages. What does it mean to love those people–parents, grandparents, even lovers–who committed the worst atrocities the world has ever known? And is any atonement possible through literature? Schlink’s prose is clean and pared down, stripped of unnecessary imagery, dialogue, and excess in any form. What remains is an austerely beautiful narrative of the attempt to breach the gap between Germany’s pre- and postwar generations, between the guilty and the innocent, and between words and silence.

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Murakami’s latest is a nonfiction work mostly concerned with his thoughts on the long-distance running he has engaged in for much of his adult life. Through a mix of adapted diary entries, old essays, reminiscences and life advice, Murakami crafts a charming little volume notable for its good-natured and intimate tone. While the subject matter is radically different from the fabulous and surreal fiction that Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) most often produces, longtime readers will recognize the source of the isolated, journeying protagonists of the author’s novels in the formative running experiences recounted. Murakami’s insistence on focusing almost exclusively on running can grow somewhat tedious over the course of the book, but discrete, absorbing episodes, such as a will-breaking 62-mile ultramarathon and a solo re-creation of the historic first marathon in Greece serve as dynamic and well-rendered highlights. Murakami offers precious little insight into much of his life as a writer, but what he does provide should be of value to those trying to understand the author’s long and fruitful career. An early section recounting Murakami’s transition from nightclub owner to novelist offers a particularly vivid picture of an artist soaring into flight for the first time.

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Into the intrigue and violence of Indo-China comes Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy through a mysterious ‘Third Force’. As his naive optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, finds it hard to stand aside and watch. But even as he intervenes he wonders why: for the sake of politics, or for love?

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The famously taciturn South African president reveals much of himself in Long Walk to Freedom. A good deal of this autobiography was written secretly while Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years on Robben Island by South Africa’s apartheid regime. Among the book’s interesting revelations is Mandela’s ambivalence toward his lifetime of devotion to public works. It cost him two marriages and kept him distant from a family life he might otherwise have cherished. Long Walk to Freedom also discloses a strong and generous spirit that refused to be broken under the most trying circumstances–a spirit in which just about everybody can find something to admire.

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Compiled from his own words, this history-making autobiography IS Martin Luther King: the mild-mannered, inquisitive child and student who rebelled against segregation; the dedicated young minister who constantly questioned the depths of his faith and the limits of his wisdom; the loving husband and father who sought to balance his family’s needs with those of a growing nationwide movement; and the reflective, world-famous leader who was fired by a vision of equality for people everywhere. Relevant and insightful, this Autobiography offers King’s seldom discussed views on some of the world’s greatest and most controversial figures including John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Mahatma Gandhi and Richard Nixon. This book brings to life a remarkable man whose thoughts and actions speak to our most burning contemporary issues and still inspire our desires, hopes and dreams.

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According to Arthur Golden’s absorbing first novel, the word “geisha” does not mean “prostitute,” as Westerners ignorantly assume–it means “artisan” or “artist.” To capture the geisha experience in the art of fiction, Golden trained as long and hard as any geisha who must master the arts of music, dance, clever conversation, crafty battle with rival beauties and cunning seduction of wealthy patrons. After earning degrees in Japanese art and history from Harvard and Columbia–and an M.A. in English–he met a man in Tokyo who was the illegitimate offspring of a renowned businessman and a geisha. This meeting inspired Golden to spend 10 years researching every detail of geisha culture, chiefly relying on the geisha Mineko Iwasaki, who spent years charming the very rich and famous.

The result is a novel with the broad social canvas (and love of coincidence) of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen’s intense attention to the nuances of erotic maneuvering. Readers experience the entire life of a geisha, from her origins as an orphaned fishing-village girl in 1929 to her triumphant auction of her mizuage (virginity) for a record price as a teenager to her reminiscent old age as the distinguished mistress of the powerful patron of her dreams. We discover that a geisha is more analogous to a Western “trophy wife” than to a prostitute–and, as in Austen, flat-out prostitution and early death is a woman’s alternative to the repressive, arcane system of courtship. In simple, elegant prose, Golden puts us right in the tearoom with the geisha; we are there as she gracefully fights for her life in a social situation where careers are made or destroyed by a witticism, a too-revealing (or not revealing enough) glimpse of flesh under the kimono, or a vicious rumour spread by a rival “as cruel as a spider.”

Golden’s web is finely woven, but his book has a serious flaw: the geisha’s true romance rings hollow–the love of her life is a symbol, not a character. Her villainous geisha nemesis is sharply drawn, but she would be more so if we got a deeper peek into the cause of her motiveless malignity–the plight all geisha share. Still, Golden has won the triple crown of fiction: he has created a plausible female protagonist in a vivid, now-vanished world and he gloriously captures Japanese culture by expressing his thoughts in authentic Eastern metaphors.

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1805 à Moscou, en ces temps de paix fragile, les Bolkonsky, les Rostov et les Bézoukhov constituent les personnages principaux d’une chronique familiale. Une fresque sociale où l’aristocratie, de Moscou à Saint-Pétersbourg, entre grandeur et misérabilisme, se prend au jeu de l’ambition sociale, des mesquineries, des premiers émois.

1812, la guerre éclate et peu à peu les personnages imaginaires évoluent au sein même des événements historiques. Le conte social, dépassant les ressorts de l’intrigue psychologique, prend une dimension d’épopée historique et se change en récit d’une époque. La “Guerre” selon Tolstoï, c’est celle menée contre Napoléon par l’armée d’Alexandre, c’est la bataille d’Austerlitz, l’invasion de la Russie, l’incendie de Moscou, puis la retraite des armées napoléoniennes.

Entre les deux romans de sa fresque, le portrait d’une classe sociale et le récit historique, Tolstoï tend une passerelle, livrant une réflexion philosophique sur le décalage de la volonté humaine aliénée à l’inéluctable marche de l’Histoire ou lorsque le destin façonne les hommes malgré eux.

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Victor Hugo, écrivain engagé, entreprend ici un vaste réquisitoire social. Loin de n’être que le récit de la réhabilitation d’un forçat évadé victime de la société, Les Misérables sont avant tout l’histoire du peuple de Paris. Jean Valjean, et le lien qui l’unit à Cosette, en est le fil conducteur et le symbole. Homme du peuple par excellence, damné et accablé par les humiliations successives, Jean Valjean prend sur lui le péché du monde et l’expie. Dans son effort incessant pour se racheter, il assume un destin tragique qui nous renvoie le reflet de l’humanité en marche.
Hugo retrace ici avec force les misères et les heures glorieuses des masses vivantes qui se retrouvent. Les événements se précipitent, les personnages se rencontrent, se heurtent, s’unissent parfois, à l’image de Cosette et de Marius. L’histoire du forçat évadé et de la petite miséreuse symbolisent quelque chose de plus grand : avec Les Misérables, Hugo réalise enfin l’esprit du peuple.

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Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with “cynical adolescent.” Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he’s been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists. It begins,

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.”

His constant wry observations about what he encounters, from teachers to phonies (the two of course are not mutually exclusive) capture the essence of the eternal teenage experience of alienation.

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Like the one-time bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Alchemist presents a simple fable, based on simple truths and places it in a highly unique situation. And though we may sense a bestselling formula, it is certainly not a new one: even the ancient tribal storytellers knew that this is the most successful method of entertaining an audience while slipping in a lesson or two. Brazilian storyteller Paulo Coehlo introduces Santiago, an Andalucian shepherd boy who one night dreams of a distant treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. And so he’s off: leaving Spain to literally follow his dream.

Along the way he meets many spiritual messengers, who come in unassuming forms such as a camel driver and a well-read Englishman. In one of the Englishman’s books, Santiago first learns about the alchemists–men who believed that if a metal were heated for many years, it would free itself of all its individual properties, and what was left would be the “Soul of the World.” Of course he does eventually meet an alchemist, and the ensuing student-teacher relationship clarifies much of the boy’s misguided agenda, while also emboldening him to stay true to his dreams. “My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,” the boy confides to the alchemist one night as they look up at a moonless night.

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself,” the alchemist replies. “And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”

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The Normandy Landings that took place on D-Day involved by far the largest invasion fleet ever known. The scale of the undertaking was simply awesome. What followed them was some of the most cunning and ferocious fighting of the war, at times as savage as anything seen on the Eastern Front. As casualties mounted, so too did the tensions between the principal commanders on both sides. Meanwhile, French civilians caught in the middle of these battlefields or under Allied bombing endured terrible suffering. Even the joys of Liberation had their darker side. The war in northern France marked not just a generation but the whole of the post-war world, profoundly influencing relations between America and Europe. Making use of overlooked and new material from over thirty archives in half a dozen countries, D-Day is the most vivid and well-researched account yet of the battle of Normandy. As with Stalingrad and Berlin, Antony Beevor’s gripping narrative conveys the true experience of war.

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Louis Capet ci-devant Louis XVI, roi de France, est monté sur l’échafaud, le lundi 21 janvier 1793, peu avant dix heures vingt du matin. Ce sang royal répandu rend tout compromis impossible. La république doit ” vaincre ou mourir “. La Convention en appelle à la nation : ” Aux armes, citoyens ! Le danger est partout, aux frontières du pays comme à l’intérieur, où les différents partis se déchirent et bientôt s’entretuent. Pour un rien l’on devient suspect de traîtrise à la patrie. La loi des suspects remplit les prisons, la guillotine, ce ” rasoir national “, menace tout un chacun. La Terreur est à l’ordre du jour. Le peuple, lui, a toujours faim. Les départements, la Vendée, la Provence, les villes se soulèvent. Mais à trop couler, le sang devient un fleuve emportant tous et toutes dans sa fureur. Marat, Danton, Robespierre, Montagnards, Jacobins, Girondins, Enragés et Indulgents, sont tour à tour acclamés, honnis, réhabilités, décapités. ” La révolution est glacée. ” En 1795 enfin, le Directoire proclame le temps de la Concorde, et l’on se prend à rêver à la réconciliation. Mais les dirigeants corrompus détournent les richesses, se vautrent dans le luxe. Et le peuple recommence à gronder : ” Au moins, du temps de Robespierre on avait du pain ! ” Les ” ventres creux ” appellent à la révolte face aux ” ventres dorés et pourris “. Alors s’avance un jeune général auréolé par la gloire conquise en Italie, en Egypte. Il promet le retour à l’ordre. Par le coup d’Etat du 18 brumaire, il s’empare du pouvoir. Il se nomme Bonaparte. Il déclare : ” Citoyens, la révolution est fixée aux principes qui l’ont commencée : elle est finie.”

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Loin de l Histoire officielle, des manuels de notre enfance, voici la Révolution française vécue de l intérieur. Un récit exaltant et fondateur.
Révolution Française : et s il fallait la démaquiller ? Afin de comprendre comment un peuple, un Roi qui veulent réformer la France, qui rêvent de Vertu, de Liberté, d Égalité, de Fraternité, sont emportés par la violence.
Pourquoi la Terreur au lieu de la Vertu ? Pourquoi la Révolution au lieu de la Réforme ?
Max Gallo reconstitue jour après jour les événements, il suit les acteurs, scrute l opinion des citoyens anonymes, de ceux qui s enthousiasment puis désespèrent, abandonnent les clubs révolutionnaires, et accablés voient se dresser la guillotine.
Révolution Française : en suivant Max Gallo, on voit le pouvoir se décomposer, le royaume le plus admiré d Europe se défaire, un monde nouveau apparaître, sur les ruines de l Ancien régime.
Mais entre ces deux mondes il y a, écrit Chateaubriand, ” un fleuve de sang “.
On rêvait d une nation unie ? Et ce sont les massacres, les haines, et pour finir Bonaparte.
On rêvait de paix ? Et c est la guerre.
On acclamait Louis XVI et Marie-Antoinette et ils montent les escaliers de l échafaud, et l on montre leurs têtes tranchées au peuple.
Révolution Française : Max Gallo, loin de l histoire officielle et de l histoire maquillée, nous fait revivre de l intérieur ces années de passion.
Un récit exaltant et fondateur du séisme majeur de notre Histoire.

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This edition of the highly acclaimed one-volume CHURCHILL: A LIFE, is the story of adventure. It follows Winston Churchill from his earliest days to his moments of triumph. Here, the drama and excitement of his story are ever-present, as are his tremendous qualities in peace and war, not least as an orator and as a man of vision. Martin Gilbert gives us a vivid portrait, using Churchill’s most personal letters and the recollections of his contemporaries, both friends and enemies, to go behind the scenes of some of the stormiest and most fascinating political events of our time, dominated by two world wars, and culminating in the era of the Iron Curtain and the hydrogen bomb.

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Firstly, it should be noted that The Lost Symbol has incorporated all the elements that so transfixed readers in The Da Vinci Code: a complex, mystifying plot (with the reader set quite as many challenges as the protagonist); breathless, helter-skelter pace (James Patterson’s patented technique of keeping readers hooked by ending chapters with a tantalisingly unresolved situation is very much part of Dan Brown’s armoury). And, of course, the winning central character, resourceful symbologist Robert Langdon, is back, risking his life to crack a dangerous mystery involving the Freemasons (replacing the controversial trappings of the Catholic Church and homicidal monks of the last book). And while Dan Brown will never win any prizes for literary elegance, his prose is always succinctly at the service of delivering a thoroughly involving thriller narrative in vividly evoked locales (here, Washington DC, colourfully conjured).

Robert Langdon flies to Washington after an urgent invitation to speak in the Capitol building. The invitation appears to have come from a friend with copper-bottomed Masonic connections, Peter Solomon. But Langdon has been tricked: Solomon has, in fact, been kidnapped, and (echoing the grisly opening of the last book) a macabre mutilation plunges Langdon into a tortuous quest. His friend’s severed hand lies in the Capitol building, positioned to point to a George Washington portrait that shows the father of his country as a pagan deity. The ruthless criminal nemesis here is another terrifying figure in Brown’s gallery of grotesques: Mal’akh, a powerfully built eunuch with a body festooned with tattoos. Mal’akh is seeking a Masonic pyramid that possesses a formidable supernatural power, and a pulse-pounding hunt is afoot, with Langdon stalled rather than aided by the CIA.

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«En fait, j’aurais tout aussi bien pu ne pas écrire. Après tout, ce n’est pas une obligation. Depuis la guerre, je suis resté un homme discret ; grâce à Dieu, je n’ai jamais eu besoin, comme certains de mes anciens collègues, d’écrire mes Mémoires à fin de justification, car je n’ai rien à justifier, ni dans un but lucratif, car je gagne assez bien ma vie comme ça. Je ne regrette rien : j’ai fait mon travail, voilà tout ; quant à mes histoires de famille, que je raconterai peut-être aussi, elles ne concernent que moi ; et pour le reste, vers la fin, j’ai sans doute forcé la limite, mais là je n’étais plus tout à fait moi-même, je vacillais, le monde entier basculait, je ne fus pas le seul à perdre la tête, reconnaissez-le. Malgré mes travers, et ils ont été nombreux, je suis resté de ceux qui pensent que les seules choses indispensables à la vie humaine sont l’air, le manger, le boire et l’excrétion, et la recherche de la vérité. Le reste est facultatif.»

Avec cette somme qui s’inscrit aussi bien sous l’égide d’Eschyle que dans la lignée de Vie et destin de Vassili Grossman ou des Damnés de Visconti, Jonathan Littell nous fait revivre les horreurs de la Seconde Guerre mondiale du côté des bourreaux, tout en nous montrant un homme comme rarement on l’avait fait : l’épopée d’un être emporté dans la traversée de lui-même et de l’Histoire.

Jonathan Littell est né à New York, en 1967. Les Bienveillantes est sa première œuvre littéraire.

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