French writers at this stage choose Italy as the backdrop for their novels. A trend that is consolidating. It is not a trend, but the renewed pleasure of recalling a country with which there has always been, beyond historical rivalries, a close relationship. And Sardinia is also at the center of the interests of authors from beyond the Alps. Confirmation comes from “Marchands de sable” by Agnès Mathieu-Daudé, published by the prestigious Flammarion publishing house.
In the book, just reviewed by the newspaper Le Figaro (which dedicated a large part of its latest cultural insert to the relationship between French novelists and the Bel Paese), a story that has the Sardinian Island as its backdrop and in particular a magical holiday resort with “a transparent sea of white sand” where the two protagonists, Marta and Ercole Signorelli, had their holiday home built.
Agnès Mathieu-Daudé, born in Montpellier (now her life takes place in Paris), who also wrote the children's book "The class of mice", published in Italy by Piemme, and in France "Un marin chilien", " L'ombre sur la lune" and "La ligue Wallace", tells a family saga, a showdown during a hot summer, with warlike feelings not exactly in line with the beauty of the natural scenery. There are Cagliari, Carbonia, Castiadas, Arborea, as urban and geographical references to a Sardinia that becomes a great scenario in which the characters of the novel move.
The description
The start is dazzling with the description of the "City of the Sun" seen from the plane shortly before landing: the ponds with flamingos that fill the horizon with pink and the welcoming Gulf of Angels. A city that shows the many overlaps of historical eras: originally Phoenician and finally, after various events, Italian. In the background the refinery which is an economic and industrial choice, the author explains. The book opens with the lines of William Blake (“Houses of Innocence”): “To see a world in a grain of sand/And a paradise from a wild flower,/To hold infinity in the palm of your hand/And eternity in an hour". But there is also Pierpaolo Pasolini, with his "Corsair Writings", in a rich and multifaceted novel, with many reading plans.