Our book selection this week: “The Messenger Shadow,” “The Kamanga Kings,” “The Artist Critic”…
THE MORNING LIST
While we wait for our twelve pages dedicated to the literary season, "Le Monde des livres" highlights a final selection of spring and summer books, to read before the autumn tidal wave. These include the poems of the great Occitan poet Max Rouquette, two volumes of which are appearing, twenty years after his death, like so many invitations to the land of dreams; an irresistible musical road trip in Donald Trump's America, by the Anglo-Sudanese novelist Jamal Mahjoub; the whirling and mischievous texts of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) on art criticism; but also a novel of adventure and mystery in early 19th - century France, by Armand Cléry.
POETRY. “The Messenger Shadow” and “The Silent Bees,” by Max Rouquette
Max Rouquette (1908-2005) forever embodies an inspired and vibrant Occitan culture. Twenty years after his death, two Franco-Occitan collections offer a wonderful invitation to the land of dreams, which he explored for more than seventy years. Aurélia Lassaque has composed a bilingual anthology, L'Ombre messagère , which combines translations by the poet, his son Jean-Guilhem and Philippe Gardy, author of a luminous afterword on this "elsewhere of childhood" which has become the very place of poetry.
But many of the master's poems remained unpublished in volume. Jorn Editions now offers 130 of them in Les Abeilles du silence , some of which are taken from the author's first notebooks, where the bard's milestones are already there, as if placed between the diurnal and nocturnal worlds. So many scores that well up from the body of the seer: "in the well of my flesh I am reflected." Ph.-JC
"The Bees of Silence and other unpublished poems", by Max Rouquette, bilingual edition, translated from Occitan by the author, Jorn, 256 p., €20." srcset="https://img.lemde.fr/2025/08/13/0/0/1772/1472/320/0/75/0/3b31df9_upload-1-vs2jg2ci5ksj-mas-roqueta.jpg 320w, https://img.lemde.fr/2025/08/13/0/0/1772/1472/556/0/75/0/3b31df9_upload-1-vs2jg2ci5ksj-mas-roqueta.jpg 556w, https://img.lemde.fr/2025/08/13/0/0/1772/1472/640/0/75/0/3b31df9_upload-1-vs2jg2ci5ksj-mas-roqueta.jpg 640w, https://img.lemde.fr/2025/08/13/0/0/1772/1472/664/0/75/0/3b31df9_upload-1-vs2jg2ci5ksj-mas-roqueta.jpg 664w, https://img.lemde.fr/2025/08/13/0/0/1772/1472/960/0/75/0/3b31df9_upload-1-vs2jg2ci5ksj-mas-roqueta.jpg 960w, https://img.lemde.fr/2025/08/13/0/0/1772/1472/1112/0/75/0/3b31df9_upload-1-vs2jg2ci5ksj-mas-roqueta.jpg 1112w, https://img.lemde.fr/2025/08/13/0/0/1772/1472/1328/0/75/0/3b31df9_upload-1-vs2jg2ci5ksj-mas-roqueta.jpg 1328w, https://img.lemde.fr/2025/08/13/0/0/1772/1472/1668/0/75/0/3b31df9_upload-1-vs2jg2ci5ksj-mas-roqueta.jpg 1668w, https://img.lemde.fr/2025/08/13/0/0/1772/1472/1992/0/75/0/3b31df9_upload-1-vs2jg2ci5ksj-mas-roqueta.jpg 1992w, https://img.lemde.fr/2025/08/13/0/0/1772/1472/2301/0/75/0/3b31df9_upload-1-vs2jg2ci5ksj-mas-roqueta.jpg 2301w" sizes="(min-width: 1024px) 556px, (min-width: 768px) 664px, 100vw" width="664">You have 63.75% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
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