"I saw the first snow of the year blooming the crests of the Hindu Kush that can be seen from Kabul itself."
In 1956, Joseph Kessel landed in Afghanistan.
With photographer Raoul Coutard, director Jacques Dupont and a young assistant who will soon make a name, Pierre Schoendoerffer, his ambition is to shoot a documentary,
La Passe du Diable
.
In this film, he wants to evoke a subject that will serve as a common thread in his Afghan epic: “bouzkachi”, a national sport close to polo which is literally translated as
“the game of the goat catch.
".
Two tribes of horsemen, the "tchopendoz", confront each other and must bring back a goat carcass before the other.
Each year, a national competition is organized in honor of the sovereign.
She will also give the title to her report
Le Jeu du Roi that
Arthaud has decided to republish under the aegis of another journalist and novelist, recent prize of the French Academy for his novel La Grande éveuve (ed. Stock), Étienne de Montety.
To read also: Mathieu Bock-Côté: "Friendship according to Joseph Kessel"
Why a repost now?
“Because Kessel's work is ultimately a bit scattered.
The publisher Arthaud wanted to bring together in a more orderly manner his journalistic work, in particular his reports, ”
explains the director of Figaro Littéraire, who signs the preface to this book with 10,000 copies.
“This makes it possible to rediscover his journalistic work in parallel with his novelistic work. When the time for reporting had passed, when the subject had infused and personal stories were grafted onto it, the writer could write a novel with this journalistic material, ”
continues Étienne de Montety.
A mechanism that governs the writing of the
Lion
, a romantic adaptation of his reports in Kenya.
And so to that of
the King's Game
which allows you to discover an unknown world in the footsteps of a masterful guide and to return to the very sources of literary creation.
Read also:
Major reports in the Red Sea
by Joseph Kessel: Under the Jeddah sun
"Everything in Afghanistan provided me with the change of scenery I had come to seek: the mountains and the rivers, the inns and the caravans, the towns and the villages, the ruins and their prestigious shadows, the language, the customs, the clothes and faces, ”
writes the academician in this report which lays the foundations for one of his masterpieces,
Les Cavaliers
, which will be published ten years later.
“Kessel may have been a little forgotten at one point, a little neglected,”
says Étienne de Montety.
But over the years, we discover his importance both as a novelist but also as a journalist, that is to say as a witness among men as he liked to define himself ”.
Insatiable traveler, he was indeed the great actor and observer of his time.
“My real adventure, like that of many people, began with the war.
I learned the comradeship of life and death, the risks of flight and above all the extraordinary brotherhood of the crew ”
confided the aviator and great resistance fighter.
Joseph Kessel leaves behind a very rich work.
The King's Game
is the first volume in a series of reissues of his major reports.
Those devoted to Israel, Africa or even Paris followed, for Kessel wrote (in
Des Hommes
, in 1972),
"one can penetrate the soul and the heart of men without looking for them on the ships, in the lightning trains and in slow caravans. "
Classic Arthaud Collection, 296 p.
22 euros.
Arthaud
Cinema, theater, music ... The student journalists of
IPJ, the Practical Institute of Journalism of the University of Paris Dauphine
, offer their perspective on cultural news.
(IPJ Dauphine)
