The article analyses three different photo-texts of francophone writers: Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s Autoportrait (à l’étranger) (2000), Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio’s L’Africain (2004), Marc Pirlet’s Le Photographe (2006) taking into account the degree of the presence of photography in their structure. Those three writers accomplish both mental and physical travel in purpose to find their origins and to rebuild their identity. The paper analyses the authors’ approach towards the space from the perspective of Marc Augé’s theory (lieu and non-lieu).

Micro-(h)istorical narratives by Claude Duneton and Jean Echenoz – The purpose of this article is a comparative study of two recent French novels, Le Monument. Roman vrai by Claude Duneton (2004) and 1914 by Jean Echenoz (2012), which, in spite of formal and ideological differences, approach the theme of the Great War in a way similar to micro-historical frameworks. Like historians representing this field of historiography, both writers depict the four years of the First World War by focusing on a small community and a geographical space limited to a small location on the home-front. Referring to the distinction between roman de l’historien (the historian’s novel) and roman du témoin (the witness’s novel) proposed by Emmanuel Bouju, the author of the article analyses the strategies used by the novelists to create an indirect witness’s point-of-view, juxtaposed with the perspective of the contemporary recipient of the events that happened a hundred years ago.

In father’s footsteps or a problematic filiation. Dominique Jamet’s case – There is a phenomenon to be observed in contemporary French literature, namely the renewal of the novel through writing about self and the day-to-day reality in the context of family history. Writers reach into the past, often traumatic and painful, in order to rebuild their own broken identity, scarred by the memory of their parents’ troubled past. This is the case with Dominique Jamet. He returns to history with a capital H (the interwar period, World War Two, the Vichy regime and the subsequent issues of accounting for collaboration), so as to draw the figure of his father, Claude, an “intellectual” turncoat. The questionable filiation is the point of departure for writing two autobiographical texts. Also, it had undoubtedly been an inspiration for Un traître, a novel published in 2008, which is a fictitious reconstruction of the biography of Jacques Vasseur, an infamous French collaborator.

Many Haitian writers since the earthquake that destroyed Port-au-Prince in January 2010 have developed in their works of fiction the theme of writing the disaster, expressing it in various forms. The aim of this paper is to analyze the strategies adopted to write about the psychological and social effects of the cataclysmic event in two post-earthquake novels, Marvin Victor’s Corps mêlés (2011) and Makenzy Orcel’s Les Immortelles (2010). In questioning the relationship between literature and the present-time, the two Haitian writers chose different styles and forms to transpose into fiction the disruptions caused by the earthquake. We will focus our attention on two narrative strategies in particular: the interior monologue chosen by Victor and the hybrid narration preferred by Orcel.

In his fifth novel La Nuit des morts-vivants, François Blais, a Quebec writer of the young generation, created yet another pair of kindred spirits after Iphigénie en Haute-Ville. The characters are young people addicted to all kinds of fiction, from high literature to video games, and they make reflections on the borders between fiction and reality that are worthy of a literary critic or a very conscious reader. Devoting every moment that they have at their disposal to reading books, watching films, and playing video games, Pavel and Moly are outstanding due to their erudition, even if they are simultaneously typical representatives of the generation with low-paid jobs or living on social benefits and realizing themselves only in the substitute world of fiction.

This article will focus on different forms of hybridization in the contemporary Belgian fantasy novel. It demonstrates aesthetic communion by referring to four authors: Alain Dartevelle, Christopher Gérard, Thomas Gunzig and Bernard Quiriny. By analyzing the syncretism at once generic, poetic and stylistic of their novels, it traces the contours of their mixed writing. It also reflects on the place that these novelists reserve for the supernatural, an ingredient inherent in fantastic alchemy, as well as on the national, even Belgian, character of their writing.

Fascinated with Mexico continually since childhood, J.M.G. Le Clézio publishes the, inspired by the countr y, novel Ourania in 2006. The author’s concern for the survival of the Mexican world has not escaped his critics. It is worth noting, however, that the writer’s emphasis on the role of the oral tradition in the Amerindian culture and their ecological attitudes are evident. The culture of the spoken language (along with the belief in the magic of words) is contrasted with the western culture of the written language (stressing the emptiness of words). The analysis of this issue and the study of the formal procedures by which Le Clézio moves from the spoken to the written language may give us a sense of the suggestive voice of the Mexican peoples along with their ecological attitudes. It seems that J.M.G. Le Clézio, who protects tribal societies who know how to use the world in a moderate way, promotes, among others, their respect for the natural environment.

This study aims to report on how the use of the allocutive person suggested by “Ce que j’appelle oubli”, eighth novel by Laurent Mauvignier, subsume many problematics that preside over the renewal of contemporary fictional forms such as the polyphony of narrative voices, the difficulty of placing an ‘I’ narrator confronted with the writing of society and particularly its minorities, as well as the place of silence within/in the literary text.

The work of the Belgian writer Nicole Malinconi is largely in line with the tendency to fragmentarity, which in addition to hybridism and collage is one of the main trends of post-modern narratives. In her works, fragmentarity is manifested in the form of a short story, which the author herself calls the brève. The article is an analysis of the characteristics of the short form, proper for Malinconi, and especially for its socially engaged works in which it performs important functions. The short story, through its brevity and the resulting intensity, interacts more easily with the reader. It also gains considerable critical power.

Contemporary biographical fictions in France: between narrative and visual – This paper discusses an evolution of point of view on biographical fictions from 90’ to the present, due to the important increase of literary practices exploring images and their role in the constitution of the biographical discourse. The relation between fiction and reality presented from the point of view of Paul Ricoeur’s ‘narrative identity’ in first approaches of biographical fictions is now substituted by the reflection about the relation between narrative and visual which discloses, particularly in the case of biographical portraits of writers, the commemorative aspects of a literary text.

The novels of Jean Echenoz are particularly known for their playfulness with which they deconstruct the codes of the paraliterary genres, as well as for a casualness with which they approach the topos of the modernist novel. The production of this author of the last two decades nevertheless testifies of a new direction that slips in the biographical. Like many writers of his generation, Jean Echenoz deals in Jérôme Lindon (2001), Ravel (2006), Courir (2008) and Des éclairs (2010) with the lives of illustrious personalities of our era. We can wonder what the objective of this approach of a writer, who shows his admiration with regard to his characters, is. Is it a simple tribute or need to fill out gaps in history that we will never complete for lack of evidence to support? This paper also tries to deal with the problem of the genre of these texts that lie at the edge between fiction and factual literature.

Tanguy Viel’s novels are peculiar variations on well-known novelistic genres: they creatively re-work familiar plot configurations, narrative strategies and thematic concerns. It would appear that this subversive re-activation of the genre can be related to this contemporary literary aesthetics which foregrounds blurring of generic boundaries and mixing of traditional forms. In this context the ambiguous generic status of Viel’s fiction deserves close scrutiny, which is precisely the aim of the present paper: it analyses his last novel Paris-Brest (2009) within the framework of selected contemporary theories of genre.

In 2014 Yasmina Khadra published the novel Qu’attendent les singes. It depicts a negative image of Algeria in the first decade of the 21st century – a country ruled by corrupted elites capable of all crimes. In the same year the writer announced his decision to participate in the presidential election in Algeria. The aim of this article is to analyze Khadra’s latest crime novel and to ask question about the links between the political campaign and the promotion of the book.