Inhabiting Literature
“Literature seeks neither to convince nor to judge. It seeks to explore.”
Literature has accompanied humanity for centuries. It has changed forms, languages, mediums, and readers. Yet its essential function remains: allowing women and men to better understand the world and, perhaps, better understand themselves.
01. A Literature That Explores Rather Than Asserts
I do not believe a novel's mission is to teach a truth. Imposed truths age quickly. Great works continue to question us long after publication. They do not close questions: they open them.
It is this literature that interests me. A literature that seeks neither to convince nor to judge, but to explore.
Every existence is crossed by contradictions. We are capable of courage and weakness, loyalty and renunciation, generosity and selfishness. No human being is reduced to a single facet. The novel possesses this precious freedom: welcoming complexity without trying to simplify it.
02. The Time of the Novel
I love novels that take their time. Those that accept silences, nuances, and hesitations. Our era often privileges speed, immediate certainties, and simple answers. Literature offers something else: the right to doubt, to slow down, to look differently.
That is perhaps its greatest strength.
03. Literature as a Dialogue
Inhabiting literature is not just writing. It is accepting to enter this conversation, to listen to others' readings, and to recognize that a book continues to be written in the minds of those who read it.
“A dialogue that never ends.”
— Rida Lamrini
This conception of literature naturally irrigates my novels. Themes, memory, the Mediterranean, or suspense compose a single universe.