Sambre : radioscopie d’un fait divers - Alice Géraud - J.C Lattès
Over a period of thirty years in the Sambre valley in Northern France, on the border with Belgium, dozens of women were assaulted by an unidentified assailant, always in the early hours of the morning. These women, who almost all reported their assaults to the local police departments, were sidelined, frequently disbelieved; until 2018, when they suddenly learned that their assailant had finally been identified and subsequently arrested. In this incisive work of investigative journalism, Alice Géraud meets the women involved, sharing their stories for the first time, and posing the question- how was this man able to perpetrate so many crimes, without any alarm being raised by local authorities, or action being taken? Much more than a true crime novel, Sambre is an important work, that through the voices of these women, highlights the institutional and societal problems we continue to face when addressing sexual violence.
From the 1980s to the #metoo movement, Géraud provides us with a snapshot of a society that is doubtlessly progressing, but not quickly enough.
À l’aube de nouveaux horizons - Nathalie A. Cabrol - Éditions du Seuil
Nathalie Cabrol is an astrobiologist for NASA, and head of SETI’s Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe. As a result, she is perfectly placed to answer the question she poses in her most recent book- are we alone in the universe? Cabrol takes us on a journey through outer space, from the exploration of our own solar system to the search for signs of extraterrestrial life, the signals we hope to detect, and the forms of evolution or even civilisation that astrobiologists hope to uncover. At the forefront of her field, Cabrol invites us into a new world, supported by awe inspiring photos taken by the James Webb telescope. As she states, with 300 million exoplanets just within the habitable zone of our own galaxy, the likelihood that we are alone is “statistical nonsense”.
Thought provoking and fascinating, this book will get you fantasising about the worlds above our heads!
Proust, roman familial - Laure Murat
Part memoir, part work of literary criticism, Laure Murat’s latest essay is deeply personal and endlessly thought provoking. Raised in the very aristocratic milieu that Proust explores in In Search of Lost Time, and descended from Napoleonic royalty, ancestors that directly inspired characters such as the duchess of Guermantes, Charlus... Murat grew up in a world carefully regimented, with strict rules of decorum and etiquette; but also a world where the characters of Proust’s novels seemed as real, or realer, than the people surrounding her. Breaking with her family for good at the age of 20 following her coming out and determined to live her life under her own terms, Proust’s works gave her a clearer insight into the world from which she was emerging - its prejudices and its hypocrisies, further helping her to free herself from her past.