Literature Retrospective

Five books from 2023 that made an impact on our editorial team

6 reading minutes

written by Le Regard Libre · December 24, 2023 · 0 comment

Five books from 2023 that left their mark on our editorial staff

Let's end 2023 on a high note! Instead of the traditional confetti and cotillions of New Year's Eve, the editors of the Regard Libre, with its best reads of the year.

Diana-Alice Ramsauer

A desire to spit in the face of all those brutal belligerents? And at the same time, fed up with good feelings in the run-up to the holidays? VolodiaIt's the perfect antidote to all the self-righteousness, benevolence and honeyed end-of-year atmosphere... while cathartically relieving you of the structural, phallic and imperialist violence of this world. In Volodia, Czech author André Ourednik - also a lecturer at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the University of Neuchâtel - presents four death scenarios. Dictators, and in particular Volodia, the affectionate diminutive of Vladimir. We'll leave you to make your own deductions.

Also read the full review of this novel. Should Putin be assassinated? That is the (literary) question

So, is he to be devoured by a toad with womanly arms? Quartered by the genitals? Drowned in front of the UN General Assembly? Or served on a skewer to Matteo, Solovyev and the Hungarian friend? The choice is yours. In the face of our impotence, Volodia a disgusting little tale, wickedly pleasant.

André Ourednik
Volodia
Editions La Baconnière
2023
120 pages

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Sandrine Rovere

How do you bounce back when you've won one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the United States and are now read the world over? Franco-Jurassienne Elisa Shua Dusapin answers this question in her own way in her new novel The Old Fire, published this autumn by Editions Zoé. The writer has chosen to return to her roots. For this, her fourth book, Elisa Shua Dusapin leaves behind the Far East, to which she has devoted her previous works. It's in Périgord, the region where she was born, that the Bruntrutaine sets her action.

Also read the full review of this novel. A sororal tête-à-tête in Elisa Shua Dusapin's new novel

The old fire tells the story of the reunion of two sisters who haven't seen each other in fifteen years, following the death of their father. There's the one who stayed and the one who now lives in New York. There's the one who has lost the ability to speak, and the one who uses words on a daily basis for her work as a screenwriter. There are misunderstandings, regrets and memories. Elisa Shua Dusapin evokes the question of roots and communication. But she does so without mawkishness or sentimentality. Quite the contrary, in fact, The old fire is a kind of intimate huis clos.

Elisa Shua Dusapin
The Old Fire
Editions Zoé
2023
140 pages

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Chelsea Rolle

The Justice of Men could have been entitled «The insufficiency of words». Santiago H. Amigorena has placed in his new novel all the weight of silence, the silence that sets in when events have broken the bonds that existed between people who loved each other. A father, Aurélien, abandons his children for a few moments in a dark tunnel in the middle of the night. Whether or not he is responsible for his actions, he leads his family into a crying silence. How can he then repair what seems irreversible? After a spell behind bars, he has to face up to himself first, then his wife and children. It's clear: this is a novel about making amends through silence and time, and perhaps seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Santiago H. Amigorena
The Justice of Men
P.O.L
320 pages
August 2023

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Aude Robert-Tissot

Rosemary here, tomatoes there, linguine that slips and intertwines around the fork, tongue burning under a lasagne... welcome to Rome, to the life of the beautiful and sultry Ottavia. Sit down at her table and you won't be disappointed. It took her a long time to make her mark in this male-dominated world. Before her, her father owned a restaurant. When she was younger, she shared her passion with a toxic lover, before succumbing to the charms of a food critic with whom she had three children. Between work, desire and melancholy, her life at the dawn of her forties is marked by solitude. Julia Kerninon, with her lively pen, wastes no time in awakening our senses.

Using recipes and audacity, Kerninon portrays the complexity of a strong, intense, even annoying woman, a hard worker who has no problem with her husband sacrificing his career to look after the children alone. Kerninon achieves a reversal of traditional roles. A tarte Tatin. A sformato feminist? But is it feminist to prioritize work, power and passion, to the detriment of loved ones? This book prompts us to question our own conceptions, to reflect on the place of work, family and desires, all spiced up with delicious Italian flavors.

Julia Kerninon
Sauvage
L'Iconoclaste
299 pages
August 2023

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Quentin Perissinotto

Is this the best book of the year? It's hard to say. What is much clearer is that it is certainly the most memorable. One dreary day in 1995, in a Vancouver hotel room, Hazel Brown woke up with the absolute certainty of having written the entire works of Baudelaire. She is the essence of his metaphors, his eye on modernity, his body in the face of poverty. She doesn't drape herself in his words, she inhabits his existence. Far from being a pompous exercise in admiration, this book is a fictional autobiography as much as a poetic art. Baudelaire's fractal is a concentrate of literature, a shot of lyrical fulgurances. To read Lisa Robertson is to drown in the immensity of the beauty of words, and to pull your head out of the water just in time to catch your breath, dizzy with flashes, haggard with splendor.