Christophe Landour
Between attempts at tying a tie, some more successful than others, Christophe Landour, a senior civil servant at the Ministry of Finance, enjoys writing plays, short stories, and novels in his spare time (or rather, his earned time), all sharing a common thread: an unexpected ending, much like his ties. His career path has been equally unpredictable, 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, crisscrossing the Seine-et-Marne roads so dear to the late Laurent Fignon, the author, realizing at the dawn of the 2000s that he would never win the Tour du Limousin and that he would never surpass 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), decided, "for pleasure" (in homage to Herbert Léonard), to take another path and study history and law at the University of Paris I. A few degrees and competitive exams later, he entered public service by joining the civil service, where he would build his career up to the highest levels of the civil service after attending the ENA in 2010. Today, he is an administrator of 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 it takes to make decisions that can change a life. Some of them have even changed the face of the world. Four seconds. In the grand scheme of things, nothing on a lifetime, but they can seem like an eternity in certain crucial moments. These "fifty shades" of time, which impose their impetuous dictates upon us, form the basis of the eight independent stories that make up this collection of short stories. From the sweet, bittersweet struggle of a hitherto faithful husband to resist the advances of an all-too-seductive intern, to the acidic decision with disastrous implications made by a young engineer at a Ukrainian nuclear power plant on a dark April night in 1986, the slices of life in this book bear witness to four seconds of eternity that have forever altered the course of lives, and sometimes history itself. They also prompt us to consider the psychological mechanisms that guide the final decision. If you can't identify those four seconds that changed your life, they're yet to come. You now have four seconds to decide whether or not to start reading these short stories. Four, three, two, one… So? Publication date: July 1, 2024 Order Press release
Simon Simonet, the celebrated Goncourt Prize-winning author, is celebrating his 40th birthday. To mark the occasion, he has invited five of his closest friends to his home, friends he met twenty years ago when they were all literature students. Back then, they had challenged each other to become writers. Although they all work in literary fields (French teacher, philosopher, bookseller, publisher, journalist), only Simon has managed to get published and achieve the renown they all aspired to. Simon is thus the "First Among Us" (the first of them) to reach this goal, the title of the novel that earned him the Goncourt Prize by recounting their collective destiny. But tonight, his friends, without having consulted each other, will not come to celebrate Simon's success. Tonight, they will confront their old grudges and resentments and reveal the unspeakable and the unthinkable. The plot will unravel like a knot in a tie that's been tied for too long... Publication date: October 1, 2023 Order now
