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A sculptural globe of the world, mounted on an Art Deco bronze column, presides over the noble hall of the Intercontinental in Bordeaux, an emblematic French luxury hotel, with red velvet sofas in every corner, neoclassical moldings and a Belle Époque aesthetic with a twist. Oriental.

With his

hat (or rather

), pearl gray scarf and an elegant cane, Pierre Lemaitre (Paris, 1951) could seem like one of his characters from

(Salamander), another of his

(this one has come out of 586 pages), a fast-paced family saga set in Paris in 1948, Beirut and French Indochina.

"At that time, Saigon was an island within Vietnam, a world apart that looks like this hotel: all luxury, but outside there are poor people on the streets and people dying of cold. Vietnam was mired in communism, with the troops of Mao who were gaining ground from the north and Saigon was a place suspended in time, a non-stop party, especially for foreigners," says Lemaitre as he climbs some majestic marble stairs, lined with statues of goddesses.

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He wears black shoes with two velcro straps, like the ones children wear at school, and he confesses that the cane is not for aesthetics (although he moves it like a

), but rather because of a problem he has had with his foot.

With his unshaven beard that gives him a look somewhere between scoundrel and bohemian, Lemaitre sits in a booth on the first floor, where soft ambient jazz plays, and evokes the Grand Monde of his book, that (real) casino that was the epicenter of colonial life in Saigon: "It had no equivalent, it was an establishment with a gambling hall, restaurant, brothel... A place where thousands of people smoked opium, gambled, ate, drank, had sex...".

More than Las Vegas...Oh yeah.

Las Vegas is a world devoted to gambling, while the Grand Monde was devoted to pleasure in all its forms.

It's also a reference to the wider colonial world... When you talk about Vietnam you always think of the US war, but it all started with France. Totally.

The Indochina war and the Vietnam war are not the same because the tectonic plates of geopolitics changed and the context was that of a Cold War: but it was the same people who suffered the wars.

Vietnam was the battlefield between capitalism and communism.

This poor country was dismembered by the French and later by the Americans. In the book he recounts true atrocities and tortures committed by the French army.

How does France live today the review of the colonial past? France does not live in peace with its colonial past because it is confused with another debate, which is that of immigration.

Much of the immigration comes from the colonies, such as the United Kingdom.

The postcolonial debate is gangrened by that of immigration and this book shows this discomfort or shame.

France believed that it could remain a colonial metropolis but when it lost Indochina and after the disaster in Algeria, it is going to export its domain over Africa, it will colonize it by buying it with exclusive contracts with puppet companies and puppet governments.

Once the traditional colonies are lost, capitalism seeks a new way to generate money and Africa was the ideal territory, it is the last place where French neocolonialism still expresses itself today.

which is immigration.

Much of the immigration comes from the colonies, such as the United Kingdom.

The postcolonial debate is gangrened by that of immigration and this book shows this discomfort or shame.

France believed that it could remain a colonial metropolis but when it lost Indochina and after the disaster in Algeria, it is going to export its domain over Africa, it will colonize it by buying it with exclusive contracts with puppet companies and puppet governments.

Once the traditional colonies are lost, capitalism seeks a new way to generate money and Africa was the ideal territory, it is the last place where French neocolonialism still expresses itself today.

which is immigration.

Much of the immigration comes from the colonies, such as the United Kingdom.

The postcolonial debate is gangrened by that of immigration and this book shows this discomfort or shame.

France believed that it could remain a colonial metropolis but when it lost Indochina and after the disaster in Algeria, it is going to export its domain over Africa, it will colonize it by buying it with exclusive contracts with puppet companies and puppet governments.

Once the traditional colonies are lost, capitalism seeks a new way to generate money and Africa was the ideal territory, it is the last place where French neocolonialism still expresses itself today.

The postcolonial debate is gangrened by that of immigration and this book shows this discomfort or shame.

France believed that it could continue to be a colonial metropolis but when it lost Indochina and after the disaster in Algeria, it is going to export its domain over Africa, it will colonize it by buying it with exclusive contracts with puppet companies and puppet governments.

Once the traditional colonies are lost, capitalism seeks a new way to generate money and Africa was the ideal territory, it is the last place where French neocolonialism still expresses itself today.

The postcolonial debate is gangrened by that of immigration and this book shows this discomfort or shame.

France believed that it could continue to be a colonial metropolis but when it lost Indochina and after the disaster in Algeria, it is going to export its domain over Africa, it will colonize it by buying it with exclusive contracts with puppet companies and puppet governments.

Once the traditional colonies are lost, capitalism seeks a new way to generate money and Africa was the ideal territory, it is the last place where French neocolonialism still expresses itself today.

he will colonize it by buying it with exclusive contracts with puppet companies and puppet governments.

Once the traditional colonies are lost, capitalism seeks a new way to generate money and Africa was the ideal territory, it is the last place where French neocolonialism still expresses itself today.

he will colonize it by buying it with exclusive contracts with puppet companies and puppet governments.

Once the traditional colonies are lost, capitalism seeks a new way to generate money and Africa was the ideal territory, it is the last place where French neocolonialism still expresses itself today.

The exotic Saigon contrasts with a post-war Paris with harsh rationing in his serial novel.

After

, a trilogy from the end of the First World War and the exodus of Frenchmen that caused the Second, Lemaitre has plunged into another ambitious undertaking: a tetralogy on the so-called

( 1945-1975) in France- or the three decades of economic growth that shaped today's consumer society.

"In Spain you did not have that time, of course, you were with the Franco regime... But in France it was the height of capitalism, when they make us believe that everything is going well and will be better.

..", points out the writer, son of that generation of prosperity that, however, contrasts with the hardships of the post-war period at the end of the 40s, one of the most conflictive times of a France ruined after the war. Only in 1948 it had four different governments with constant strikes and demonstrations, in which the police used tear gas for the first time.Lemaitre portrays it in his book without being able to avoid a parallel with the Yellow Vest protests.

"I admit that it is an easy temptation and that I make a relationship with the France of today... I wrote this novel at the time of the Yellow Vests, when the protesters were turned into criminals and the people were considered a military-type enemy

I

suffered seeing how the right to demonstrate was criminalized. And I fell for the strikes of '48 that were repressed with blood..."

If in Spain the first volume of

has just come out , in France the second,

, has already been published, with which Lemaitre continues to write his great fresco of the 20th century.

"I do not have the ambition to tell 'The Human Comedy' of the 20th century, I am much more modest. I am content with making a serial, with drawing a landscape of the century", he concedes.

It seems that the writer has abandoned the black novel that made him so popular forever.

And although he no longer writes pure and hard

, he does color his detective books, no matter how historical or costumbrist they may be.

More than any of his previous novels,

stands out for a mixture of genres without prejudice: there are murders and serial killers, thrillers, family saga, romance, picaresque... "The picaresque is always there, it's my Spanish side", jokes the writer, an admirer of the Hispanic literary tradition, from

(some of his most famous characters have that quixotic point or, rather, of Sancho Panza) to the

of

"Authorize me to be pretentious for five minutes. Many writers have tried the ghost of making a novel that would be everything at the same time: love, families, crimes, adventures... Well, I have tried it too. Then it will be the critics and the public who will decide if it works or not. In any case, it gives me pleasure to borrow a little of everything, without wanting to write 'the novel of novels' just to have fun".

A prized entertainment for his faithful readers, who at the end of the story will be able to connect it with one of his previous books, with a cameo included.

"Shhh, let's not make spoilers," warns Lemaitre.

It is time for lunch and he leaves the luxury of the Intercontinental for the brasserie on the Place de la Comédie, in the same place where Victor Hugo gave a mythical speech on the vicissitudes of Europe in 1871. In the

, Lemaitre orders a

-a meat stew-, just like one of his characters in

and he is already talking about the next one, about that

that will arrive in 2024.

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