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  • Today, "Towards a better elsewhere" by Johan Heliot, published on March 18, 2022 at Seuil Jeunesse.

Anne-So "Echos de Mots", youth literary blogger and contributor to the  

20 Minutes

Books reading group, recommends

Towards a better elsewhere

by Johan Heliot, published on March 18, 2022 by Éditions du Seuil Jeunesse.


His favorite quote:

Extreme poverty engenders extreme violence;

solidarity is a concept of the wealthy, only valid when you have a full belly and wallet.

But when you're dying of starvation or untreatable illnesses, when you're freezing under a filthy plastic sheet as a blanket guide, when you have to walk for hours from evening to morning to go from a soup kitchen to a distribution of used clothes, because you no longer have enough points to use public transport… So only rage keeps you on your feet.



Why this book?

  • Because

    Towards a Better Elsewhere

    is a dystopia set in France

    , in the near future.

    Several years after the Collapse and the establishment of the permanent state of emergency, we meet two heroes who will share the narrative: Arno and Maya.

    These two have one thing in common: they both ended up losing all of their citizenship points and must suffer the consequences.

  • Because Maya, 17, is condemned to a partial updating

    of her cognitive and memory faculties.

    It must therefore be "updated" and will lose ten years of memories in order to start on new bases in a France where the citizens are under the permanent control of the State and its agents.

    The problem: Her 8-year-old autistic brother, Max, needs her and she absolutely cannot afford to leave him alone with their father.

    So Maya will make the decision to flee with Max to the south.

  • Because 18-year-old Arno also lost all his points.

    After a first update several years ago, it is now in a rehabilitation center that he should be sent but, finally, the judge decides on another fate for him.

    He will have to join the P2CE, the Effective Citizen Collaboration Program.

    His role now: find the fugitives and bring them back into the hands of the Republic of National Union so that their sentence is applied.

  • Because

    Towards a Better Future

    is an effective, breathless

    and terrifying novel because it is potentially realistic.

    The sustained pace leaves no respite to the characters as to the readers and the pen, effective and pleasant, always goes straight to the point.

    Moreover, this dystopia goes beyond fiction since it carries reflections on forced migration and dictatorship.

    To read absolutely!


The essentials in 2 minutes

The plot.

When she loses her citizenship points, Maya decides to flee France-Nord with her little brother towards the South Zone.

Unfortunately, his path through the Great Desert, the no man's land and the high wall, will be strewn with pitfalls.

Characters.

Maya and Arno are two teenagers who will try to survive against a totalitarian system.

They are both determined and courageous although realistic and sometimes terrified.

Places.

The novel begins in France-Nord, formerly Paris.

The heroes will then travel through France towards the South hoping to reach Africa where life would be sweeter.

The time.

The novel is set decades after the Collapse after a virus decimated the world.

The author.

Johan Heliot, real name Stéphane Boillot-Cousin, is a prolific French writer – with more than a hundred books to his credit – living in Epinal.

Former professor of French and history-geography, he went on leave from the National Education in 2002 to devote himself to writing.

This book was read with

pleasure by Anne-So Echos de Mots, blogger specializing in children's and teenage literature.

“For me, reading can be as much a personal pleasure in which one runs to take refuge as an excuse to discuss and meet other readers.

I am a lover of words always interested in new discoveries.

»

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