Sunday Interview. Sorj Chalandon: "My books don't heal my wounds"

It's one of the most anticipated novels of the literary season. In The Book of Kells (Grasset), published Wednesday, the writer Sorj Chalandon recalls his youth in the 1970s, with his pockets full of holes, his stomach empty, the streets as his only shelter, then his fraternal commitment to the far left, and finally his entry into the newspaper Libération . A comrade on the road and in doubt, or the chronicle of a French youth in struggle.

The Book of Kells is the twelfth novel by writer and journalist Sorj Chalandon. Photo SIPA /François GREUEZ — The *Book of Kells* is the twelfth novel by writer and journalist Sorj Chalandon. Photo SIPA /François GREUEZ

After fleeing your family in Lyon, dreaming of another life, you experienced the streets, hunger, and solitude in Paris, a young man without a roof over his head, ready to defend your dignity with a knife. What remains of him in the accomplished man that you are?

“I am still that street dog: it still growls inside me. Its anger is eternal. The street has shaped me, it has taught me to see humanity in its wounds and in its light. When I see a man humiliating another in the street, I do not pass by. Injustice, disrespect, I do not tolerate them. And yet, faced with an old couple crossing a street, leaning on their canes, I cry. Because it is beautiful, with a gentle violence, this fragility that resists.”