La fille qui marchait dans le désert
À l'occasion d'une conférence sur l'écrivain Adam Saint-Gilles, Anne rencontre sa veuve, Mathilde, et passe la nuit dans son gîte rural. La nuit devient des mois. Anne ne quitte pas les lieux malgré les rudes tâches exigées par Mathilde : débiter du bois, redresser une haie affaissée lui vaudront la lecture d'un roman inédit, promise jour après jour. Anne, esclave consentante de Mathilde. la découverte, à l'autre bout du domaine, de Zohra clouée dans un fauteuil roulant, demi-sœur de Mathilde et jadis amante de Saint-Gilles, éclaire d'une lumière crue la face cachée de la vie de l'écrivain...
- Bleue
- Paru le 01/04/2010
- Genre : Littérature française
- 160 pages - 140 x 205 mm
- EAN : 9782715229532
- ISBN : 9782715229532
Foreign Rights
La fille qui marchait dans le désert
Rights sold :
- Suede - Elisabeth Grate Bokförlag
- Grece - Livanis Publishing
Presentation
Mathilde and Zohra are half-sisters. Their father was an archaeologist. At Zohra’s mother’s death in Africa, he brought back the little girl to live with his French family. As young women Mathilde and Zohra loved the same man, the writer Adam Saint Gilles. One of them was his wife, the other became his mistress. Saint Gilles is long dead but Mathilde’s hatred for Zohra is still as fierce. Scorned, hurt, humiliated, Mathilde was a powerless witness to the passionate love affair between her husband and her half-sister. Zohra, the daughter of the desert, listened only to her heart, with no concern for conventions or morality. She now lives recluse in a small house, illness has confined her to a wheelchair, but she lives for the memory of the time she and Saint Gilles loved each other. Meanwhile, Mathilde resentfully waits for the death of Zohra, the betrayer. Anne is writing a biography of Saint Gilles and boarding with Mathilde. Through her questions, the biographer builds a bridge between the two sisters and cracks the heavy silence they have retreated into. Will Anne succeed in reuniting these two old women who have shared the same father and the same lover ?
Novelist and poet, Vénus Khoury-Ghata is a prolific author. Amongst her published works: Sept Pierres pour la femme adultère (sold into Swedish, Italian and Greek) and Les Obscurcis (laureate of the Poetry Prize of the Académie française 2009).
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Geneviève Lebrun-Taugourdeau: +33 (0) 155 426 195
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