Tuesday's Books – Ivan Garcia Giacomo Papi meticulously describes the flaws of today's populism in *The Census of...*.

A journey to early 20th-century Spain.

Our chronicle review of the Goncourt 2021 winner

Fatima Daas, Muslim and lesbian

LONG-FORM INTERVIEW, Jonas Follonier | Moix is a free spirit. Above all, he is driven by «novelistic truth»—which he conveys with the flair of a genius, using phrases that are as sensitive as they are harsh, and as tragic as they are funny. Who else but a master of premeditated improvisation is capable of this? A former panelist on the show «On n’est pas couché,» hosted by Laurent Ruquier on France 2, and former host of his own show «Chez Moix» on Paris Première, Yann Moix is also a child of television, who loves to put his verbal wit to work in the intimate and demanding exploration of people, books, and the world. I had been warned: «He’s a bit of an oddball.» This experience was confirmed during this interview, which very nearly didn’t happen. The writer, director, and television commentator opens up to *Le Regard Libre* about his «horrible years» in his twenties, the city of Reims in the 1980s, and the anti-Semitism he became entangled in during that time. And one of the best contemporary French authors explains to us exactly what he means by «novelistic truth,» two years after being the subject of controversies related to his family—a family he no longer refers to as such.

A first novel of remarkable virtuosity.

d Bear, a whole catalog of tirades come to the rescue of the man's ramblings.

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.

A sometimes harsh self-criticism