A center with narrow streets, ochre, blue or pink facades and shutters, palm trees: it is hard to imagine that La Seyne-sur-Mer, a town of 62,000 inhabitants on the shores of the Mediterranean, was a bastion of French industry. for about a century.

From its shipyards came 1,944 hulls of ships that criss-crossed the seas of the world, ocean liners, tankers, LNG carriers... Thousands of people worked there.

In the heyday, when a giant of the seas rushes into the Mediterranean, "tricolor flags float everywhere, resound with the strokes of the piston, the fla of drums, the shock of cymbals, resound with blare galore", writes Christian Astolfi in his novel "From our swept away world" which will be published on April 7 by "Le Bruit du monde", a new publishing house based in Marseille.

On this spring day, 33 years after the final closure of this site, devastated by Asian competition and the unbridled liberalization of the economy, Christian Astolfi returns to the door of the worksites, a rare vestige still standing.

The writer Christian Astolfi in La Seyne-sur-Mer, March 24, 2022 in the Var Nicolas TUCAT AFP

Every morning, under this arch of white stone and pink brick surmounted by the inscription "Forges and construction sites of the Mediterranean", the workers went to the forge, the boilermaking, the sheet metal.

Of these workshops, there is almost nothing left, apart from the tagged carcass of the "general mechanics", at the end of the site.

"It's weird, at the time of the construction sites, it was so lively here. We even liked the noise of the workshops because it was life!", Says Annette Girolami, 80, who walks with her walker.

Behind the old site gate now stretch out a park and an enormous cube of glass and gray metal... A casino, temple of gambling.

"A casino is far from the values ​​of what this working world was like," says Christian Astolfi.

For his fourth novel, the 63-year-old writer based in Marseille tells this story which is also a bit his own.

As a young man, he worked as a sheet metal carpenter at the Toulon arsenal, just opposite, to repair navy ships, the same site where his father was a mechanic.

Demolition of facilities at the former La Seyne-sur-Mer shipyard on July 5, 2000 in the Var ERIC ESTRADE AFP

And the scenes where the narrator of the book, a worker at La Seyne, observes in the locker room his father who is stingy with words, in love with his work, are inspired by family experience.

Christian Astolfi also dedicated the book to his father, Paul, and his uncle Dominique.

"Disoriented Beast"

"I wanted to write about work, which nourishes men and at the same time destroys them", he explains, just after showing, next to the door to the construction sites, this discreet room where a "permanence" is held every week. asbestos".

Because the book also speaks of the eruption of this "white lady" in the body.

Demolition of buildings at the former shipyard in La Seyne-sur-Mer on July 5, 2000 in the Var ERIC ESTRADE AFP

"We breathe it in, we ingest it", emphasizes Christian Astolfi, whose uncle died of mesothelioma, cancer due to asbestos, referring to this substance, recognized as dangerous since 1977, which will nevertheless be used until the end of construction.

"She walked inside us like a disoriented beast, killing when she decided," writes the narrator.

Some are quickly mowed down, others seem spared but live with the anxiety of illness.

However, if asbestos "destroys" these laid-off workers, it ends up "reconnecting" them because they come together to fight and have the harm caused to them recognized, notes the writer.

If the deindustrialization of Seyne was played out after the arrival of the left in power in 1981, "which we hoped for so much and from which we were so disenchanted", explains Christian Astolfi, it resonates with the current distresses.

In Aveyron, in Decazeville, it is employees of the automotive supplier SAM who are occupying their factory in an attempt to save it.

And in La Seyne-sur-Mer, still, it is the Cnim group which will be dismembered to avoid bankruptcy: if this company still bears the name of the old shipyards - Naval and Industrial Constructions of the Mediterranean -, it no longer carries out vessels but turnkey industrial units.

The writer Christian Astolfi in La Seyne-sur-Mer, March 24, 2022 in the Var Nicolas TUCAT AFP

The book, with its short and refined sentences, relates with acuity the grief which settles in these workers' strongholds in disinheritance.

But it also reveals the depth of friendships and moments of grace: "These memories that no one can take away from us," says Christian Astolfi.

© 2022 AFP