Brest, de brume et de feu

Part novel, part memoir, both a personal testimony and a tribute to his own people, Brest, de brume et de feu opens a cycle of three “city portraits,” to be followed by volumes on Paris and Rome. In the manner of Gracq as geographer — a writer Le Guillou admires above all others — Le Guillou composed these texts “by teaching, by writing, by desiring and by loving,” in order to capture the kaleidoscope “bound up with the miracle of Brest, its magnetism, its skies, the interplay of showers and clear spells […]; its neutral, almost muted palette, that grayness which is not quite gray, that hidden sun always on the point of breaking through, that rain too, more like a soft, salty, almost enveloping mist — that unique, luminous gray, that grace of Brest which only the faithful and the fervent know how to capture.”