Rebeka Warrior, a powerful foray into literature

Sitting cross-legged in front of a glass of lemon water, Julia Lanoë, aka Rebeka Warrior, is less impressive than on stage. At home in her apartment in eastern Paris, a few days before the release of her first book, Toutes les vies (Stock, in bookstores August 20), with a soft voice, close-cropped hair, a tattooed right arm, and a humble and warm smile, she wears round metal-rimmed glasses. A coquettish gesture to perfect her first-time novelist look? "Not at all, I recently realized that I needed them to see up close; old age has made me presbyopic, and I've been having a headache lately."

At 47, the boisterous musician, singer, and DJ, who stuns crowds with her gabber sets (a subgenre of techno, often referred to as hardcore ) and has been mesmerizing audiences since the early 2000s with the wild concerts of her bands Mansfield, TYA, Sexy Sushi, and Kompromat, has literally settled down. In her living room, a raised tatami mat sits. Crystals are arranged on a shelf.

For several years, Julia/Rebeka has been diligently practicing zazen (seated meditation), and was even renamed Eino during a Buddhist ceremony in 2022. But it is under the name Rebeka Warrior ( “ I didn’t choose it any more than my birth name, ” she says . “It was my partner in Sexy Sushi who gave it to me when we started. I love Warrior, I feel it in my veins, but I admit that Rebeka, if I had to do it all over again, I would choose another one” ) that she is now putting herself on stage in a way that is new to her.

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