July 2019. The noise spreads quickly in the corridors of Bercy: Michel Houellebecq has lunch peacefully at the ministry self-service, alone in front of his tray.
The writer has spent the morning touring this 1980s Republican palace with the minister's chief of staff and is resting for a moment.
"I would like to see offices,"
he had simply stated over the phone a few days earlier.
He will not be disappointed.
Once Bruno Le Maire has been greeted, the author is taken for a complete tour of the premises: the minister's hotel, the pier on the Seine, the prestigious floors of the Treasury Department, car parks… The great writer, camera in his hands and handbag slung back, wanders, without a word, between the relatively deserted offices that day.
"It's funny, there aren't a lot of papers,"
he is just surprised.
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The visit seems to have depressed him quite a bit.
Described as
"a totalitarian citadel grafted into the heart of the city",
the Ministry of Finance, with its endless corridors ...
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