Un livre inutile

It was with Fata Morgana that Christian Bobin published his first booklets: Souveraineté du vide (1985), L’Homme du désastre (1986), Lettres d’or (1987), before Gallimard published La Part manquante (1989), followed by the bestsellers 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, given his manner of composing fragments set with confidences and aphorisms, Christian Bobin conceived of writing as “a work of healing … of suffering life, of life undermined by modern conditions.” Like a Christian ascetic, he sought to “express as well as possible things felt obscurely, … in pursuit of the greatest simplicity, and to convey an emotion that has come to [him], to ensure that this emotion is contagious.”