INTERVIEW
The writer Maxime Chattam came on Thursday to present on Europe 1, on the show L'equipped sauvage, his new thriller "Un (e) sectes", published by Albin Michel. A novel where insects suddenly begin to communicate with each other and to organize. On this day of Halloween, Maxime Chattam has defended himself to be a gore author and told the microphone of Matthew Christmas why human fears fascinate him.
"I forbid myself to be a gore author.The gore has something spectacular, free," says one who has sold more than seven million novels in France. He concedes: "It is true that there are scenes of crime that I will describe precisely". Maxime Chattam explains: "Typically, I do not like the crime writers who will tell you on an autopsy scene:" the decaying body smelled bad ". The one who is nicknamed the French Stephen King prefers to find the exact words: "I will describe to you what it is the smell of a decomposing body".
An art of detail and truth that makes his stories sometimes horrifying. "I'm going to have the image of a gore author while I'm defending myself, I'm more of a realistic author," says the author of The Soul of Evil . "But realistic in the thriller of criminal investigation, necessarily, it can sometimes be a little strange," he admits.
"Fear allows me to explore areas that are a priori uncomfortable"
Maxime Chattam, who studied criminology before becoming a novelist, is interested in human fears and what they say about us. "Small animals, insects, we can use many different ways, I tried to illustrate these moments of jitters with all our scenes of everyday life: when we sleep with our mouth open, when we take a shower When you read a good book, the book starts like this, "he notes. "Insects are a good metaphor for the society we live in. We are insects and I have played them for two reasons," he says.
For Maxime Chattam, the fear he distils in his novels "allows him to explore areas a priori quite uncomfortable but in which we will find quite a lot of interesting things about what we are individually but also collectively."