The French writer Philippe Besson tells it like this: “This novel was born from an encounter with a young man with whom I struck up a random conversation.
We talked for a while and, at some point, he ends up saying to me:
'My father killed my mother
. '
That sentence, almost
shot at point blank range
, left the author of
Live quickly
(Literary Alliance) and
Stop telling lies
(La Caja) speechless.
It is not that Besson did not know of the existence of the death of women at the hands of their companions, acquaintances or complete strangers just because they were women.
He had simply
never been so close to those other victims
, about whom little is said, while the photos of the murdered woman and the perpetrator are reproduced.
Philippe Besson.
“The phrase – Besson continues in a video available on the website of the Mollat bookstore – immediately plunged me
into astonishment and silence
: It is very difficult to answer.
I try to know and start asking questions.
Later that same day I will see
a report on television about some children whose mother was murdered by their father
who recount that unique moment, so frightening, so terrifying, where the figure of protection, which is the father, kills the figure of love, which It is the mother".
In Mexico, in the last ten years, more than 23,000 minors
lost their mothers in a femicide.
In Argentina, this kind of crime has been recorded since 2008 and, according to data from the civil association La Casa del Encuentro,
during 2022, 341 daughters and sons were left without a mother
for this reason, 222 of them (65%) are under the age of age.
A weekly average of 4 orphaned minors.
What counts and what doesn't
"Why didn't you talk about this before?" asks the writer Philippe Besson.
He replies: "
We are collateral victims
and, as such, we must remain silent because
what counts is the femicide
, her death."
Ceci n'est pas un fait divers, the new book by Philippe Besson.
But this explanation disturbs the French author who looks at the camera: “I tell myself that not because they are collateral victims they must disappear, and from there the novelist that I am decides that they must give them a voice.
We have to make them visible and that's how I started writing
”.
His new novel is titled
Ceci n'est pas un fait divers
(Julliard) and it has been released a few days ago in France.
Last year,
108 women were murdered at the hands of a femicide in that country
.
These crimes represent more than 80% of female deaths.
The data is from the National Federation of Victims of Feminicides (FNVF).
They also register the
140 orphans
who lost their mother.
look too
1985, Gil Lavedra and the stories of History
look too
Marianela Núñez, the swan and Messi
look too
james's words
