“This book which, in some ways, begins at the end, follows on from Quartier charogne. I wanted it to be gloriously chaotic. A bit like opening up trunks in my attic, I tugged randomly at scraps of well preserved memory and set them down during the course of the narrative, mixing up my years in prison (in Loos-lez-Lille) with the years after my sentence.

(...) I hope to show how you make the transition from the local interest stories to the cultural pages of a newspaper without falling back into crime. The loves and losses, storms and strife involved in maintaining the relative idleness needed to be creative in a world where the work you can’t secure has become the most important thing – that’s what this book is about.”

Nan Aurousseau

As with Quartier charogne, serious issues and emotions are juxtaposed with humour and showboating. In Ballad of a Bad Boy, whose narrative covers six years in prison, characters break down walls to get to a typewriter, make love in a Peugeot van, bump into François Truffaut, have dinner with Claude and Anne-Marie Berri, join Khaled in another Aurousseau, less well known than the jailbird and writer: the filmmaker waiting to be discovered.

Nan Aurousseau has written four novels published by Stock, Bleu de chauffe, Du même auteur, Le ciel sur la tête and Quand le mal est fait. With Ballad of a Bad Boy, he continues the memoirs begun with the truculent Quartier charogne (2012).