INTERVIEW
"I will leave with an additional desire". Confined to Belgium, Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt is already anticipating the end of the coronavirus crisis, confident that it will be "even more ogre than before". But in the meantime, the Franco-Belgian writer takes advantage of this forced confinement at home to work on the writing of his next novel, which will appear in September, as he announced on Thursday, on Europe 1.
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"When you are a writer, confinement is like writing a book", he explains to Anne Roumanoff's microphone, in It feels good, "I don't see it as a tragedy" . But, he specifies, "I am not confined alone, fortunately, because for some, this confinement is a test of solitude".
The author of best-sellers like Oscar and the pink lady or Mr. Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran therefore decided to use it to prepare his return to the bookstore. And promised, he says, it will not be a confinement novel, which he fears that they "invade the publishers". "I'm writing a big novel which will be published at the start of the school year and which will be called Paradise Lost, " he said simply.
"We can come out of confinement grown up"
Returning to the unprecedented crisis provoked by the coronavirus epidemic, Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt believes that it has at least the merit of bringing people together. "It is something that binds us. Even if it is an ordeal that is lived individually, it is also lived in solidarity with others. From 'I', we become 'us', and it has been a very long time since c was not like that ". And to conclude: "There is something that grows us in this experience".
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Finally, the writer believes that this confinement can push "many people to reinvent themselves". "You can rebuild your life on essential emotions, and you can come out of this confinement individually," he continues. "This is an opportunity to tell us: 'What is essential to me? What makes me happy?'".