Literature for all

By Marjorie Modi

Technicolour memories of Cannes • • • The Mediterranean is in my blood. The fact that I was born in the Paris region is a total anomaly. I arrived in Cannes when I was 8 years old, and then everything made sense. My life changed. My memories were filled with colour: I was finally where I was supposed to be. Everything was beautiful: the landscapes, the colours, the bare, tanned skin, the blue sky... I had never seen any of it! And I have kept that sense of wonder. I make the most of everything that Cannes has to offer every single day: the sea, the Lérins Islands and the culture. I love contemporary dance, and there are excellent ballets here, just as wonderful as the ones in Paris!

Writing as a vocation • • • Literature was only for super-humans! I had to get a “real job”, so I became a film director. But after 20 years in cinema, where I struggled more and more to be my true self, I felt the need to write without asking myself who the audience would be and how much it would cost. Without trying to get published, I wrote my first novel Ma Reine, when I was 46 years old. And that’s when I met the person who went on to change my life: my editor, Sophie de Sivry. She believed in me, even though I had already been rejected 14 times. And I certainly knew what rejection felt like. After 20 years in the film industry, failure is something you learn very quickly. People say I have an extraordinary gift and that boosts my ego enormously. But I really don’t. We have to make literature less sacred and demystify writers. Because literature is broad, it is plural, it is joyful as well. Are you wondering how I managed to write a book like that? I am too. And I wonder the same thing each time I write a book.

You won the Goncourt. What’s next? • • • I’m very proud of that, obviously. But winning the prize is not the main reason for it. I’m mostly proud of never giving up. Perhaps most people don’t manage that. There is no magic formula, only an appetite, a joy that you just nurture, you dedicate your life to it. For me, writing is like the priesthood. You give your life to it, you are passionate about it right to the end, or you just don’t do it. What’s next? I don’t know yet. After each book, I have wondered how I’d go about writing the next.  It’s always difficult to find a new way of doing something. I’m starting to explore some themes that are meaningful to me, but until then my heroes will go on living in other ways: Des diables et des saints is being adapted for the cinema by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The same goes for Veiller sur elle, for which I have just signed a contract with two producers. It’s in a mini-series format because that fits the timeline best.

[ 1979 ] Arrived in Cannes, aged 8.

[ 2001 ] Shooting of his first film Dead End in Los Angeles.

[ 2016 ] A decisive meeting with publisher Sophie de Sivry. 

[ 2017 ] Publication of his first novel, Ma reine. 

[ 2023 ] Prix Goncourt for Veiller sur elle.