recent years, the question has resurfaced with force

: can we separate the work from its author

?

From the Nobel awarded to Peter Handke to the Caesars to Roman Polanski, not to mention the Renaudot Prize to Gabriel Matzneff, the debate rages on.

Likewise, the Nazi past of great thinkers of the twentieth century, starting with Heidegger, disturbs our appreciation of their legacy, while the inclusion of a Céline or a Maurras in the book of national commemorations has sparked a bitter dispute.

?

And ban works when their author is at fault

?

Far from invective, this short essay intends to put this question into perspective, historical, philosophical and sociological, by analyzing the positions taken in these "

".

But far from "

", he decides, offering everyone the means to progress intellectually on a terrain strewn with pitfalls.

In the mid-1980s, brought up by a divorced mother, V. fills the void left by a father with absent subscribers by reading.

At thirteen, at a dinner party, she meets G., a writer whose sulphurous reputation she ignores.

From the first glance, she is struck by the charisma of this fifty-year-old man with false airs of a bonze, by his enamored glances and the attention he pays her.

Later, she receives a letter in which he declares his "urgent" need to see her again.

Omnipresent, passionate, G. manages to reassure her

: he loves her and will do her no harm.

When she has just turned fourteen, V. offers herself to him body and soul.

The threats of the miners' brigade reinforce this dangerously romantic idyll.

But the disillusion is terrible when V. understands that G. has always collected love affairs with adolescent girls, and practices sex tourism in countries where minors are vulnerable.

Behind the flattering appearances of the man of letters, hides a predator, covered by part of the literary milieu.

V. tries to tear himself away from the hold he has over her, as he prepares to tell their story in a novel.

After their breakup, the ordeal continues, because the writer continues to reactivate the suffering of V. through publications and harassment.

For so many years my dreams have been filled with murder and revenge.

Until the day when the solution finally presents itself, there, before my eyes, as obvious: to take the hunter in his own trap, to lock him in a book