Bernard Bourrit

Bernard Bourrit's novel "Détruire tout" (2025) reconstructs a real femicide in 1960s Switzerland, yet consistently rejects a linear perpetrator psychology or moral resolution. Drawing on archives, observations, and essayistic fragments, the perpetrator, Alain, appears less as an individual monster than as a symptom of a patriarchal, rural, and authoritarian social structure that enables violence. This review demonstrates how Bourrit exposes the narrow confines of rural life, male normalization, unspoken emotions, and asymmetrical gender relations, analyzing masculinity in particular as a fragile, overburdened construct whose claim to control morphs into destructive violence. The male body becomes the arena for social injustices, while Carmen emerges as a projection screen for societal expectations, without being reduced to a mere figure. Formally and ethically, the text avoids using the murder as a narrative climax, leaving it as an empty space, thus focusing attention on the underlying conditions rather than sensationalism. Thus, the review understands “Détruire tout” as a literary investigation of social violence, which unfolds its political and aesthetic power precisely in the failure of explanation and catharsis.