For several years now, the question has come up with force

: can we separate the work from its author

?

From the Nobel awarded to Peter Handke to the Césars to Roman Polanski, not to mention the Renaudot prize to Gabriel Matzneff, the debate is raging.

Similarly, the Nazi past of great thinkers of the 20th century, beginning with Heidegger, clouds 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 has made a mistake

?

Far from invective, this short essay intends to put this question into perspective, historically, philosophically and sociologically, by analyzing the positions taken in these "

".

But far from "

", it stands out, offering everyone the means to progress intellectually on a terrain strewn with pitfalls.

In the mid-1980s, raised by a divorced mother, V. filled the void left by an absent subscriber father through reading.

At thirteen, at a dinner party, she meets G., a writer whose sulphurous reputation she does not know.

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

Later, she receives a letter in which he declares his "imperious" 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.

Threats from the miners' brigade reinforce this dangerously romantic idyll.

But the disillusion is terrible when V. realizes 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 herself away from the hold he has on her, as he prepares to tell their story in a novel.

After their breakup, the ordeal continues, because the writer continues to reactivate V.'s suffering with publications and harassment.

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

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