Repairing living things
Oh the beautiful days! 2024
Interview with Clara Arnaud and Maylis de Kerangal.
Clara Arnaud and Maylis de Kerangal share an incandescent writing style and a taste for the right words to ignite stories. Both also attach importance to places and the way they constitute the very material of fiction. “Without place, there’s no writing a novel; without landscape, there’s no novel. And I hope the novel will become a landscape,” explains Maylis de Kerangal.
In Clara Arnaud’s latest novel, the setting of the Ariège mountains concentrates these narrative stakes. During the summer months, repeated attacks on the herds by a very large bear rekindle tensions. This is where Alma, a young ethologist, and Gaspard, a shepherd, live among the animals. In this Pyrenean valley, man and animal have been intimately linked for centuries, as recalled by the story of a young bear showman who left to make his fortune in New York a century earlier, and whose tragic end echoes the present. Clara Arnaud explores the contradictions in our relationship with living things, drawing on a nature story and opening up the possibilities of a French-style wilderness.
Maylis de Kerangal’s ability to transcend reality and turn it into a vast narrative is at the heart of her literary project. From the birth of a bridge to describe globalization, to the transplantation of an organ to question gift and transmission, the author of Réparer les vivants and Un monde à portée de main loves nothing more than “unfolding situations that organize the contemporary world”.
Fictionalizing the real to better think it through, combining spaces and emotions, the two authors will be keen to question the mechanisms that set their language in motion and drive their writing.
Co-produced with Mucem.
To read
Clara Arnaud, Et vous passerez comme des vents fous, Actes Sud, 2024.
Maylis de Kerangal, Canoës, Verticales, 2022.
Interview with Clara Arnaud and Maylis de Kerangal.
Clara Arnaud and Maylis de Kerangal share an incandescent writing style and a taste for the right words to ignite stories. Both also attach importance to places and the way they constitute the very material of fiction. “Without place, there’s no writing a novel; without landscape, there’s no novel. And I hope the novel will become a landscape,” explains Maylis de Kerangal.
In Clara Arnaud’s latest novel, the setting of the Ariège mountains concentrates these narrative stakes. During the summer months, repeated attacks on the herds by a very large bear rekindle tensions. This is where Alma, a young ethologist, and Gaspard, a shepherd, live among the animals. In this Pyrenean valley, man and animal have been intimately linked for centuries, as recalled by the story of a young bear showman who left to make his fortune in New York a century earlier, and whose tragic end echoes the present. Clara Arnaud explores the contradictions in our relationship with living things, drawing on a nature story and opening up the possibilities of a French-style wilderness.
Maylis de Kerangal’s ability to transcend reality and turn it into a vast narrative is at the heart of her literary project. From the birth of a bridge to describe globalization, to the transplantation of an organ to question gift and transmission, the author of Réparer les vivants and Un monde à portée de main loves nothing more than “unfolding situations that organize the contemporary world”.
Fictionalizing the real to better think it through, combining spaces and emotions, the two authors will be keen to question the mechanisms that set their language in motion and drive their writing.
Co-produced with Mucem.