Un livre inutile

Christian Bobin published his first pamphlets with Fata Morgana: Souveraineté du vide (1985), L’Homme du désastre (1986) and Lettres d’or (1987), before Gallimard published La Part manquante (1989) and the bestselling Une petite robe de fête (1991) and Le Très-Bas (1992), which established his reputation with the wider public.

An epistolary writer rather than a novelist, working in fragments set with confidences and aphorisms, Christian Bobin conceived his writing as “a work of healing … of suffering life, of life damaged by modern conditions.” Like a Christian ascetic, he sought to “express as well as possible things felt obscurely, … in search of the greatest simplicity, and to convey an emotion that has come to me, [to] make sure that this emotion is contagious.”