François Audouy
Born in 1985, François Audouy is the author of a collection of short stories (Brighton Rock(s), L'Écarlate, 2011) and an essay on Antonin Artaud (Antonin Artaud, le sur-vivant, L'Harmattan, 2016). Originally from the Paris region, he has lived in London and Dakar, where he taught at a French high school. He also published a collection of poems, Mémoire vive, in 2025 and contributed to the translation of Antonin Artaud's Messages Révolutionnaires, published in the UK in 2024.
By a strange twist of fate, an aspiring writer finds himself transported to 1920s Paris, where he encounters his idol, Marcel Proust… François Audouy invites us on a journey into the past, the past of the Belle Époque, but also our own, our most intimate and authentic past. *The Love of Proust in the Time of Covid* is not a critical essay on Proust, but a tribute through the lens of fiction. The author shares his love of *In Search of Lost Time* and of literature in general, the kind that imprints itself on reality, altering our perceptions. He incorporates several layers of narrative and literary history, as well as references to popular culture, which he interweaves and superimposes to create a new voice. A book about reminiscence cannot be written from the outside. The narrator resurrects his lost years in echo to Proustian memories, taking *In Search of Lost Time* as a guide that illuminates our lives with new meaning. Even if some moments remain "suspended in the air like unfinished novels," even if we no longer travel certain "train lines of memories," it is indeed the quest for lost paradises, for the books we are currently writing, that propels us forward and keeps us in transit—in Time. Publication date: April 1, 2025. Order now. Press release.
François Audouy : "Nous sommes tous proustiens sans le savoir" , à lire sur Actualitté.com
