In bookstores: Hélène Frappat, Anya Nousri, Camille Bordas...

The bullet didn't miss far. The main character in Hélène Frappat's novel speaks at one point of "our neighbors the French." The dictatorship imagined by the author therefore takes place elsewhere than in France, in a fictional European country. The boss of the FEU party, the one who calls herself Nerona and also calls herself "the Prince," has established a tyranny there. Hélène Frappat pours out a river of words, those of the woman in power, those of her communicators, and especially those of her sister, Sibylle, who, like a Pythia of ancient times, tries to warn. All this is going to end badly. The Neronesque hymn has, moreover, dire overtones: "If everything ends in fire, let us burn together! / Look, look at the night where the flames rise!" Nerona, a political satire, was conceived as a fascist sitcom, and it navigates between references to Antiquity and contemporary borrowings. The "Prince's" private life is readily exposed, under the control of his services. Here are these fiery-tempered "royals": the grandmother who loves chilies dipped in coffee, the mother to whom we owe everything, the sharp-tongued sister, the unruly little girl, and Choupinou the dog. There are few prominent men in this dictatorship that recycles everything to its advantage, including feminism. Like Catherine de Medici of old, Nerona governs enlightened by the advice of an astrologer and also a tarot specialist. Her language is brutal, filthy. Example: "Green Deal, my ass. Nothing