L’Anomalie

A remarkable “novel-world,” L’Anomalie offers a gallery of nine portraits: seven different people, and two mathematicians tasked with creating a kind of algorithm covering every situation of danger, threat, attack or panic. “Among the authors I consider essential are two major figures: Italo Calvino and Romain Gary. I had written an earlier book, Je m’attache très facilement, whose title was taken from a book by Gary. Still on the theme of the double, I have no doubt: we are not alone in the Universe. But technical civilizations blow up their own planets before managing to leave them! That explains why we never encounter extraterrestrials: if they are as foolish as we are, they will destroy their own planet before even managing to build a single spacecraft! The trouble with evolution is that we become intelligent enough to destroy the planet, but not intelligent enough to save it.”

Rare in first printing and with an inscription.