Between art installation and non-dystopia: Théo Casciani's radical diagnosis of the present.

In his novels "Rétine" (2019) and "Insula" (2026, both published by POL), Théo Casciani presents two interrelated experiments exploring the digital present. While "Rétine" dissects the disintegration of a long-distance relationship in a world of art installations, Skype windows, and globally circulating images, "Insula" intensifies this aesthetic of distance into an existential dystopia: an illegal VR pill, political radicalization, and the father's death from cancer intertwine to form a narrative of untouchability, grief, and algorithmic coldness. Both novels revolve around the question of how perception, the body, and intimacy are transformed under the conditions of permanent mediatization. – This dual interpretation reads these texts as a development from an aesthetic "poetics of the surface" to a morally charged non-dystopia. She argues along central categories – gaze, space, time, intertextuality, masculinity – and shows how Casciani elevates the motif of the eye to a poetics matrix: from the retina as a repository of visual stimuli to the insula as a neuronal metaphor for isolation. Both novels culminate in the "Scream" – a moment in which the body interrupts the dominance of images and asserts itself against the smooth simulation of the world.

➙ To the article

Sunken worlds, open wounds: Geology and trauma in the work of Elisabeth Filhol

Élisabeth Filhol's novel "Doggerland" (2019, English translation 2020) intertwines the present of a storm raging over the North Sea with the deep past of a submerged landscape that once connected Great Britain to the European continent. At its heart are geologist Margaret and engineer Marc, who reunite twenty years after their separation—embedded in a narrative that intertwines personal biographies with geological, climatic, and mythological timescales. While Margaret scientifically reconstructs prehistoric Doggerland, Marc works on the industrial exploitation of the very geological strata she is researching. The novel unfolds amidst storm warnings, fossilized forests, tectonic visions, and the epilogue of a Stone Age catastrophe, transforming the North Sea into a space where past, present, and future are inextricably intertwined. This review analyzes "Doggerland" as a poetic-scientific reflection on the agency of nature and the vulnerability of human life plans. It shows how Filhol uses geological processes—isostasis, glacial dynamics, tectonic rifts—not merely as a backdrop, but as structuring metaphors for psychological trauma, memory, and recurrence. The essay explores how mythological semanticizations (the storm as a goddess, the ice as a breathing organism) merge with precise scientific language. The review argues that "Doggerland" undermines the illusion of human control in the Anthropocene: nature appears not as a resource or backdrop, but as an independent, cyclically active force that shapes individual and collective history—and can return from the depths at any time.

➙ To the article

Lise Meitner's victory against Otto Hahn: Cyril Gely

Cyril Gely's novel "Le Prix" (2019) stages an intense psychological clash between Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner on the day of Hahn's Nobel Prize award in 1946. In the confines of a Stockholm hotel suite, a moral and intellectual duel unfolds, exploring the unequal power dynamics, gender dynamics in science, and the ethical failings of National Socialism. Gely's dramatic prose transforms historical facts into a huis clos, in which Lise Meitner reclaims her suppressed scientific achievements and Hahn is forced to confront his moral guilt. In the end, Hahn receives the Nobel Prize—but true recognition belongs to Meitner, whose quiet justice rewrites history as an indelible echo.

➙ To the article

Reconciliation is in the midst of conflict: Christine de Maizières

Christine de Maizières' "Trois jours à Berlin" (Wespieser, 2019; I was somewhat incredulous to find no German translation) transforms November 9, 1989, into a poetic mosaic of voices, memories, and perspectives. A French woman, Anna, travels to the divided city to find the man she once met—Micha, the son of an East German official. Interwoven with Stasi files, inner monologues, and the otherworldly perspective of the angel Cassiel, the novel unfolds a polyphonic narrative of history as a 'folding': Berlin becomes a vibrant metaphor for Europe, a "plain immense" filled with ruins, languages, and longings. The fall of the Wall appears not as a heroic moment, but as a delicate instant of permeability, in which silence, misunderstanding, and poetry subvert the power of ideologies. “Trois jours à Berlin” can be interpreted as a poetic reflection on a French perspective of Germany—as a work that makes the division not only political but also existentially tangible. De Maizières’s shifting narrative forms, her interplay between lyrical introspection and bureaucratic coldness, allow the event itself to speak: reconciliation as an aesthetic movement, not as a historical conclusion. In the tension between Anna and Micha, between the angel Cassiel and the people, we find the image of a Europe searching for its “missing part”—a lost tenderness that rediscovers itself in the moment of opening.

➙ To the article

Rimbaud Fictions: Jean-Michel Lecocq

"Le squelette de Rimbaud" by Jean-Michel Lecocq is a crime novel revolving around the mysterious discovery of Arthur Rimbaud's grave, delving into the legends and legacy of the poet. The novel is set in Charleville-Mézières, Rimbaud's hometown, which is mired in a period of cultural inertia and economic austerity. This lethargy is abruptly interrupted when Georges Hermelin, the deputy mayor responsible for cultural affairs, proposes a daring and provocative idea: expanding the Rimbaud Museum with a special exhibition, the centerpiece of which would be Rimbaud's femur. The shock, however, is immense when, upon opening the coffin, it is discovered that the skeleton inside has both legs intact and therefore cannot belong to Rimbaud.

➙ To the article

Changing lives: Claudine Galea

Claudine Galea's novel "Les choses comme elles sont" (Éd. Verticales, 2019) takes the childhood and adolescence of an unnamed protagonist in Marseille and its surrounding area during the 1960s and 70s as the starting point for an exploration of childhood, family dynamics, and the impact of historical events on individual development. At its core, it is the story of the "Petite," who evolves from a curious child to a rebellious teenager and finally to a young woman on the cusp of all possibilities. The novel portrays an existential family history of great hardship, marked by "black holes" that are unspeakable yet indelible. Simultaneously, the reader breathes in the linguistic density of the eras lived through in Marseille and the bitter aftereffects of history stretching from one shore to the other of the Mediterranean. Galea's fresco combines a lyrical writing style with the distance required to examine the darker corners of France's national narrative.

➙ To the article

Poetics of Childhood: Mathieu Palain, Sale gosse (2019)

Mathieu Palain's "Sale gosse" (2019) primarily tells two stories: that of Marc and that of Wilfried, the "sale gosse"—the "dirty brat" who repeatedly falls through the cracks of the system. Marc, himself marked by a difficult background, tries in his work to save a generation that barely believes in salvation. Wilfried, confronted early on with violence, drugs, and instability, seeks solace in football, a prospect that repeatedly eludes him. Palain's "Sale gosse" portrays childhood in precarious social circumstances as a microcosm of societal structures and individual destinies, offering a portrait of vulnerability, the search for recognition, and the speechlessness on the margins of society. The novel not only recounts the failure of individual biographies but also—subtly and without false pathos—develops its own poetics of childhood.

➙ To the article

L'art ne valait rien sans doute mais rien ne valait l'art

Picasso ouvrait mes yeux et les yeux de ceux qui, par crainte d'affronter la jouissance de voir, cette concupiscentia oculorum tant redoutée d'Augustin, se débinaient et regardaient ailleurs, et des aveugles en grand nombre que les images laides qui envahissaient l'espace avaient dégoûtés ou endurcis (images laides d'autant plus proliferantes que les hommes avaient de moins en moins leur mot à dire, pris qu'ils étaient dans une Folie d'informations en continu pour rien).

Read more

This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.

Rentrée littéraire: contemporary French literature
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to give you the best possible user experience. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognizing you when you return to our site, and helps our team understand which sections of the site are most interesting and useful to you.