Dominique Rabaté on Emmanuel Carrère's "Kolkhoz": "A book of reconciliation"

Dominique Rabaté, professor of contemporary French literature at the University of Paris Cité, where he directs Cerilac (Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies and Research in Literature, Arts and Cinema), discusses the significant number of family stories in this literary season.

There have never been so many family stories in bookstores, do you agree ?

It's massive indeed this year. We have the impression of reading only stories of family dysfunction. The category "narratives of filiation" defined by Dominique Viart [professor at the University of Paris-Nanterre, specialist in contemporary French literature, editor's note] works well for this type of book. How can we explain this wave? Disillusionment with politics, withdrawal from the collective, refocusing on individuals seen as pieces of the family line... We can also see a concern in the memory of transmission, the feeling of being overwhelmed by the times. So we are interested in ordinary oppression, the psychiatrization of female deviance, the uncovering of the secret that was kept secret.

Is it also because it sells ?

This is undoubtedly becoming a business. We can talk about the standardization of editorial content linked to the choices of editors: if there is a secret in the closet, a sexual abuse or a forgotten ancestor, it is a positive thing. We see this same trend in cinema, which is showing a growing interest in documentaries and reality. I find that The