A luminous little book, somewhere between a tale and a fable.

LONG FORMAT INTERVIEW, Ivan Garcia | Every year, the «Le Livre sur les quais» festival in Morges is the rendezvous of the Swiss literary season, where authors, publishers and readers meet on the shores of Lake Geneva. For this twelfth edition, the honorary president of the event is none other than Spanish writer and translator Javier Cercas. Based in Catalonia, the columnist for the Spanish daily «El País» has been writing books since the 1980s. His best-selling novel, «The Soldiers of Salamis», published in 2001, features a journalist investigating a mysterious soldier who, during the Spanish Civil War, is said to have saved the ideologue and founding member of the Spanish Falange, Rafael Sánchez Mazas. Particularly interested in the history of contemporary Spain, from which he draws material for his writings, Javier Cercas has recently embarked on a series of detective novels centered around the detective-investigator Melchor Marin, the first part of which, «Terra Alta», was translated into French this year by Editions Actes Sud. Meet the writer on a September afternoon, under the «Livre sur les quais» authors' tent, to discuss his work and the situation in Spain and Catalonia.

On June 28, we met Professor Georges Nivat, an eminent French Slavic scholar, at his home in Haute-Savoie. His hospitality is Russian, and the view splendid. He welcomes us to his garden, which he likes to take care of for an hour every morning before plunging into his work. Among other activities, Georges Nivat is currently translating the Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus into French. The next day, he has a Zoom appointment with Kiev, an opportunity to exchange nuances of Ukrainian with the man who helped him acquire the language. The Russian world is his home; we hope to discover a few versts of it under his guidance.

This book is not the story of a secret agent from the early 20th century.

Two lost characters who find each other

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