Erik Orsenna
Erik Orsenna est l’auteur de L’Exposition coloniale (prix Goncourt 1988), de Longtemps, de Madame Bâ et de Mali, ô Mali. Il a aussi écrit des petits précis de mondialisation...
L ORIGINE DE NOS AMOURS
Auteur
Parution :
09/03/2016
Collection :
La Bleue
OUR LOVE AFFAIRS AND THEIR ORIGINS
“A father and son who barely talk. Then one summer they both get divorced at the same time. The son from his first wife, the father from his son’s mother. And now father and son talk compulsively and at length about love.
We succeed in everything except in love. Do our failures stem from an inherited gene, the ‘impossible relationships’ gene? And surely that gene comes from Cuba, the island of a thousand temptations and our family’s birthplace?”
Erik Orsenna
Moving from Bréhat to Cuba, this is the story of a family, but particularly of two men. Life binds them together just when they had given up hope of a connection: as their loves come and go so does loneliness, with the inevitability of the tides. Because these two men “crippled by marriage” refuse to stay stranded. Over the course of their conversations they trace right back to their forebear Augustin, a tailor by profession, a pianist by improvisation, who set off to Cuba for a brush with destiny and with women. This shy man initiated the family curse with his extraordinarily quixotic life 150 years ago. Meanwhile, the narrator of Our Love Affairs and their Origins has inherited the “storytelling chromosome’’ that injects rhythm and humour into his talented accounts of the joys and upheavals of these lives.
Erik Orsenna, a member of the Académie française, is the author of a fêted, prolific body of work which is remarkably varied both in style and content. Two years after Mali, ô Mali (2014), he has returned as a novelist.
“A father and son who barely talk. Then one summer they both get divorced at the same time. The son from his first wife, the father from his son’s mother. And now father and son talk compulsively and at length about love.
We succeed in everything except in love. Do our failures stem from an inherited gene, the ‘impossible relationships’ gene? And surely that gene comes from Cuba, the island of a thousand temptations and our family’s birthplace?”
Erik Orsenna
Moving from Bréhat to Cuba, this is the story of a family, but particularly of two men. Life binds them together just when they had given up hope of a connection: as their loves come and go so does loneliness, with the inevitability of the tides. Because these two men “crippled by marriage” refuse to stay stranded. Over the course of their conversations they trace right back to their forebear Augustin, a tailor by profession, a pianist by improvisation, who set off to Cuba for a brush with destiny and with women. This shy man initiated the family curse with his extraordinarily quixotic life 150 years ago. Meanwhile, the narrator of Our Love Affairs and their Origins has inherited the “storytelling chromosome’’ that injects rhythm and humour into his talented accounts of the joys and upheavals of these lives.
Erik Orsenna, a member of the Académie française, is the author of a fêted, prolific body of work which is remarkably varied both in style and content. Two years after Mali, ô Mali (2014), he has returned as a novelist.
« Un jour, je me suis remarié.
Le lendemain, mon père quittait son domicile. Entre les deux événements, personne dans la famille n’a fait le lien.
Et pourtant, mon frère est psychiatre.
J’avais ma petite idée mais j’ai préféré la garder pour moi. Mon père, je le connaissais mieux que personne. Pour une raison toute simple : nous avions divorcé ensemble. Lui de ma mère, moi de ma première femme.Lui le lundi, moi le mercredi, de la même fin juin 1975. Et rien ne rapproche plus qu’un divorce en commun. Alors je savais que les coups de tête n’étaient pas son genre. Il suivait des plans, toujours généreux dans leur objectif, mais le plus souvent déraisonnables. Cet été-là, nous avons commencé à parler d’amour, mon père et moi. Nous n’avons plus cessé. »
Le lendemain, mon père quittait son domicile. Entre les deux événements, personne dans la famille n’a fait le lien.
Et pourtant, mon frère est psychiatre.
J’avais ma petite idée mais j’ai préféré la garder pour moi. Mon père, je le connaissais mieux que personne. Pour une raison toute simple : nous avions divorcé ensemble. Lui de ma mère, moi de ma première femme.Lui le lundi, moi le mercredi, de la même fin juin 1975. Et rien ne rapproche plus qu’un divorce en commun. Alors je savais que les coups de tête n’étaient pas son genre. Il suivait des plans, toujours généreux dans leur objectif, mais le plus souvent déraisonnables. Cet été-là, nous avons commencé à parler d’amour, mon père et moi. Nous n’avons plus cessé. »
Erik Orsenna
288 pages
Format :
138 x 215 mm
EAN :
9782234078925
Prix :
24.00 €
