The writer Leïla Slimani published this year a novel, "Le pays des autres", as well as a comic strip in collaboration with Clément Oubrerie, entitled "A mains nues".

She also spoke to Michel Denisot's microphone about his future book, an essay on a night spent in a museum, to be published in January.

INTERVIEW

At not even 40 years old, Leïla Slimani is already one of the stars of French literature.

The author, winner of the Goncourt prize for

Chanson Douce

in 2016, confided in her news on Saturday in the program

Icons

on Europe 1. At the microphone of Michel Denisot, she returned to her two books published this year, as well that on his future projects, in particular his new book to be published next January.

The land of others

, a novel inspired by his family history

Last March, Leïla Slimani released

Le pays des autres

, the first volume in a family trilogy.

In this work, the writer retraces the story of Mathilde, a young Alsatian who falls in love with a Moroccan soldier who came to fight for the French army at the end of the Second World War, in 1944. A story directly inspired by His grand-parents.

"My grandmother, who was called Anne, was an icon. Mathilde was born from the memories of my grandmother and also from my imagination", assured Leïla Slimani.

"There is still more admiration in reality than in fiction, though. I have love for my characters but admiration for real people."

A bare hands

, a comic in tribute to Suzanne Noël, pioneer of cosmetic surgery

In November, the author collaborated with the cartoonist Clément Oubrerie for the comic strip

 A mains nues

, which immerses the reader in the discovery of Suzanne Noël.

This doctor and feminist, with an exceptional destiny, was one of the pioneers of cosmetic surgery by helping the "broken faces", these soldiers disfigured for life during the First World War.

>> Find all of Michel Denisot's interviews in podcast and replay here 

"She is a completely nonconformist woman, a woman ahead of her time and at the same time deeply of her time. She is a woman who feels that she has a destiny to fulfill and who therefore goes from a certain point of view. way to impose on all those around him his vocation, medicine, and more particularly surgery, "says Leïla Slimani.

"At that time, it was very subversive. If we accepted the idea that women could at the limit take care of children and the elderly, the idea that they could open a body was however absolutely not acceptable. . Suzanne Noël was one of the founders of cosmetic surgery in France and around the world. I almost fell in love with her, her romantic destiny and her strength, "the writer paid tribute to her.   

An essay to be published in January on a night spent being locked up ... in a museum!

Leïla Slimani also confided her plans for the future.

She will be releasing a book next January, on a night she spent in a museum.

"I am going to release an essay at Stock on a night I spent locked up in a museum and which aroused in me reflections on confinement, on literature. But also on my father and the experience of the prison that 'he lived and the way I myself experienced it, "she explains.

"I was locked up in Venice, at the Punta della Dogana," the point of customs ", which is a splendid museum. I was alone and I was able to wander through the museum all night, all alone, and talk with the ghosts and with the works that were around me ", she recounts.

Leïla Slimani will now get down to writing the sequel to her trilogy, which began with

Le pays des autres

.

"I'm immersed in the 1960s. There will be a little more rock, a little more jazz than in the first one," she promises.