The Novelistic Fresco

I speak of a novelistic fresco rather than a trilogy because the three books were not conceived from the start as parts of a single blueprint.

Each was born of a specific impulse. Only later did the connections reveal themselves and deepen.

Each novel develops its own trajectory, its own rhythm, and its own resolution. Reading the work as a whole, however, enriches its echoes and resonances.

It is within their dialogue that the fresco fully reveals itself.

Tant que je peux te dire je t’aime opens the fresco on the intimate: family wounds, the father-son relationship, memory, and the possibility of forgiveness.

With At the Gates of the Stars, forgiveness gives way to a quest. Salim searches for his father, while the novel expands into transmission, science, philosophy, and inquiries transcending family history.

Les Méandres de l’Oubli concludes the fresco by opening it to action, suspense, and investigation. Memory, identity, disappearance, and the father-son relationship encounter a broader world of trafficking, networks, and borders.

Each novel possesses its own identity. Together, they offer a deeper reading.

What connects these three books is not a continuous plot. It is resonances.

Characters reappear. Events take on new meaning. Certain scenes find unexpected illumination hundreds of pages later.

Reading the whole reveals correspondences that often give fresh depth to what was read before.

The fresco does not repeat. It deepens.

The fresco thus allows for multiple reading layers.

Each novel possesses its own trajectory and can serve as an entryway into this universe.

Reading the three novels in sequence reveals all the more the characters' transformations, the connections between episodes, and the shifts of questions from one book to the next.

Each reading adds a new depth.

This form allowed me to retain immense writing freedom. From one novel to the next, the register, rhythm, and narrative scope can shift without severing the connective lines.

Stories evolve. Characters change. But the great inquiries endure.

With The Meanders of Oblivion, the fresco finds its culmination. It closes the movement begun with As Long as I Can Tell You I Love You, without closing my novelistic work.

Other novels will explore new territories, other characters, and different tensions. They will not need to prolong this fresco to belong to the same writer's universe.

Beyond the plots, it is the questions, the beings, and the echoes between books that ultimately sketch a continuity.

It is this continuity, never imposed in advance, that I allow to build itself novel after novel.

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