Maylis De Kerangal

Maylis de Kerangal's novel was one of the highlights of the 2024 literary season. A flowing, undulating tale, it has the bewitching charm of a noir novel that also becomes a novel of origins, with Le Havre, a singular city dear to the author, becoming one of the characters.

An unidentified body has just been discovered on the beach of Le Havre, below the northern breakwater. In his pocket is a cinema ticket with the telephone number of Maïa, a dubbing actress who left Le Havre 20 years ago as a teenager. She returns, summoned by a police inspector.

From that moment on, memories come flooding back, plunging the narrator into her past. Le Havre, a city of geometry and light. The city reinvented by Perret and his associates in the 50s, still faces the ocean. With Maylis de Kerangal, Maïa's return to the city of her youth reveals a city that charms without seeking to be beautiful, and that changes while retaining its structure. More than a setting, Le Havre becomes the pivotal character in a spellbinding novel that borrows many of the codes of detective fiction and film noir.