Douro Editions "Through reading, we become absent from ourselves and our own lives." Alphonse Karr
Christophe Landour
Between two more or less successful tie knots, Christophe Landour, a senior civil servant at the Ministry of Finance, enjoys writing in his spare time (or, more precisely, his spare time) plays, short stories, and novels, all of which have an unexpected ending, just like his ties. His career is just as unexpected, though far from being as straightforward as the ties he wears every day. Indeed, initially a drummer by night in a pop-rock band called Bélibaste (alongside Jeff Larino), and a cyclist by day, scouring the Seine-et-Marne roads dear to the late Laurent Fignon, the author, realizing simultaneously at the dawn of the 2000s that he would never win the Tour du Limousin and that he would not supplant Phil Collins or Stewart Copeland on drums (despite the critical success of Bélibaste's first album - La savonnette à vilain - and two concerts at the Gibus) then decided, "for fun" (in homage to Herbert Léonard), to take another path and study history and law at the University of Paris I. A few diplomas and competitive exams later, he put himself at the service of the public by joining the civil service, within which he would develop his career up to the senior civil service after a stint at the ENA in 2010. Today State administrator at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, this curious jack-of-all-trades, always eager for discoveries, likes to be where he is not expected.
Four seconds. The average time taken to make decisions that can change a life. Some of them have even changed the face of the world. Four seconds. In other words, nothing on the scale of a lifetime, but which can seem like an eternity at certain crucial moments. These "fifty shades" of time, which impose their impetuous dictate on us, constitute the foundation of the eight stories, independent of one another, that make up this collection of short stories. From the sweet and sugary difficulty of a hitherto faithful husband in resisting the advances of an overly attractive intern, to the acidic decision with dire implications made by a young engineer at a Ukrainian nuclear power plant one dark April night in 1986, the slices of life in this book are intended to bear witness to four seconds of eternity that have forever altered the course of lives, and sometimes of history. They also question us about the psychological forces that guide the final decision. If you haven't identified those four seconds that changed your life, it's because they're still to come. You now have four seconds to decide whether or not to start reading these stories. Four, three, two, one... So? Release date: July 1, 2024 Order Press release
Simon Simonet, the famous Goncourt Prize-winning writer, is celebrating his 40th birthday. To celebrate, he has invited five of his best friends to his home, whom he met when they were all literature students twenty years ago. At the time, they challenged themselves to become writers. Although they all work in literary professions (French teacher, philosopher, bookseller, publisher, journalist), only Simon has managed to be published and achieve the notoriety to which each of them aspired. Simon is thus the "First Among Us" (the first of them, therefore) to achieve this goal, the title of the novel that won him the Prix Goncourt by narrating their collective destiny. But tonight, his friends, without consulting each other, will not come to celebrate Simon's success. Tonight, they will uncover their grudges and resentments and reveal the unspeakable and the unthinkable. The plot will unravel like the knot of a tie tied for too long... Release date: October 1, 2023 Order
