ANALYSIS
After Black Water Lilies and Un avion sans elle, Michel Bussi publishes Au soleil redouté (Presses de la Cité editions). The reader dives into the Marquesas Islands, in French Polynesia, where a writing workshop turns into a police intrigue. With this new novel, Michel Bussi is already at the head of sales, driven by his attachment to popular literature, which he claims. At the microphone of Philippe Vandel, Michel Bussi regretted Tuesday the lack of recognition, in France, of these not very academic writers.
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Comparing his art to that of Jean-Paul Dubois, Goncourt Prize 2019 for T ous men do not inhabit the world in the same way , Michel Bussi returns to their differences in the writing process. Jean-Paul Dubois "explains that he wrote his book in 28 days. But I would be unable to write an extremely sophisticated detective novel in 28 days because it takes documentation, thinking about its history and that all the ingredients are in their place, "says Michel Bussi. His goal: "That one has the impression that everything has been perfectly mastered, including the style", to arouse in his readers the "real pleasure of reading". To sum up, Michel Bussi explains that "popular literature is to literature what song to music would be".
A success that crosses borders
Despite this dichotomy that opposes popular literature to more academic literature, Michel Bussi has enjoyed resounding success abroad. The New York Times , for example, published a glowing review of A plane without it . "We savor the extraordinary ingenuity of the author, even if he does not breathe so fast the rhythm is sustained", we can read in this review. The British newspaper The Sunday Times was also won over by his style. "Bussi breaks all the codes in this book. I'm not sure I read such a brilliant detective novel this year," wrote the British reviewer.
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Guillaume Musso, Marc Lévy, Maxime Chattam ... According to Michel Bussi, France is full of "great authors in science fiction, in police, in children's literature". "However, they do not have the same recognition that more realistic classic authors can have," he regrets. Nothing surprising, according to him, if, apart from Jules Verne, "France did not give birth to Tolkien or JK Rowling".
How to explain this difference in treatment between France and the English-speaking world? "I think France has a real problem with imaginary literature", answers Michel Bussi. The weight of the "tradition of the realistic and naturalist novel" associated with the existence of "a literary environment" may explain this lack of recognition, according to the writer. He thus recalls that the French authors who sell the most books in the world are "Bernard Werber, Guillaume Musso and Marc Lévy". Authors that Michel Bussi considers to be the "true ambassadors of French literature abroad".