Joël Dicker, a successful writer now at the head of a publishing house, cultivates a certain taste for secrecy which is also that of the characters in his seventh novel, published Tuesday.
To discover
Crosswords, Sudoku, 7 Letters... Keep your mind alert with Le Figaro Games
A Wild Animal
is the second Joël Dicker published by Rosie & Wolfe, the house created two years ago by the Swiss novelist.
In the catalog for the moment: the entire work of Joël Dicker, 38 years old, including the five novels initially published by Éditions de Fallois which ceased their activity in 2021, and incidentally two titles by other authors, the polar
The
Swiss Philatelist Nicolas Feuz, and the essay
Reader, stay with us!
by the American Maryanne Wolf.
When asked what role Joël Dicker plays within Rosie & Wolfe, he answers:
“I'm not an editor.
I'm not the one who edits the text: it's a real job
.
Not his, he insists.
What type of leader then?
“I put the people together, who became my team, and who make this company work.
And I'm their boss.
Everyone who takes part in the Rosie & Wolfe adventure has talents that I don’t have
,” he explains to AFP from Paris.
The taste of secrecy
We therefore do not know who published
A Wild Animal
.
This was already the case with the previous novel,
The Alaska Sanders Affair
(2022), which comes out in paperback on Tuesday as well.
Rosie & Wolfe, which has its offices in the business center of Geneva, discloses the names of two administrative managers, not its other collaborators.
This very Swiss discretion is found in the characters of this
“thriller coupled with a psychological thriller with breathtaking suspense”
, as the back cover says.
Sophie is a lawyer.
Her husband Arpad Braun works in investment banking.
They live in a contemporary villa on the edge of the forest, in Coligny.
In this city of billionaires, where Ariadne de
Belle du Seigneur
by Albert Cohen resided, also lives the Liégean couple: Greg, a police officer, and Karine, a saleswoman.
They are in another neighborhood, where the municipality instills a little social diversity.
Three of them have unspeakable secrets, which will be jeopardized by the unexpected arrival of the
“wild animal”
of the title, a Frenchman who has no use for the codes and customs of good Geneva society.
Lake Geneva and capitalism
Rather than with the adrenaline of his tortuous American police investigations, Joël Dicker plays with the tangle of jealousies, behind the peaceful appearance of these shores of Lake Geneva.
They saw him born, who inherited his surname from a socialist and Russian Jewish great-grandfather who emigrated in 1906 to Geneva, where he was the target of virulent anti-Semitism in the 1930s and 1940s.
Like the novels of Albert Cohen, another immigrant Jew who was also a victim,
A Wild Animal
is full of rich people making arrangements, when their money is at stake, with the morality they display.
Would the novelist be critical of the privileged environment that saw him grow up?
He keeps the answer to himself.
“We can ask ourselves the question of the morality of money
,” he admits.
“We have become accustomed to living in a capitalist economy which generates desires and disparities.
What do we do with it now?
Some will tell you: it's the least worst diet.
But that leaves the debate open
.
The novel has a print run of 450,000 copies.
Joël Dicker then leaves for an intense promotional tour in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy, with nearly twenty signings and meetings in almost a month.
And the near certainty of a bestseller.