Hélène TAYON
Hélène Tayon lived for many years in the Middle East and taught French literature and civilization in Turkey, Tunisia, Iraq, and Bulgaria. She is also an avid traveler who loves exploring the world. The Parliament of Owls is her sixth book.
They met in high school in the 80s, and their friendship has stood the test of time. Four girls who, despite everything, seemed to have nothing in common: social background, education, future plans, ambitions. Quite a little group, as Martine, now a successful author, likes to say. She thinks she knows her friends well: Annick likes women, Sylvie likes romantic stories, Amélie likes nothing. So their lives would be without mystery? But tragedies follow one after another, enigmas persist, and appearances conceal dangerous perversions. Breaking with her background, Martine embarks on strange adventures, from Istanbul to Bangkok, then across the world. There, she discovers passionate love and the torments of writing, but ultimately, it is in Limoges, the city where it all began, that a terrifying truth will be revealed to her. This coming-of-age novel takes the reader on a sunny and humorous journey, where they will encounter astonishing characters, often masked, always passionate. Not forgetting a dog, a silent witness to the abomination, inseparable from the soundtrack of this faux thriller. Publication date: January 2, 2025. Order Press release
Claude and Hélène spent thirty years in faraway lands, amidst wars, earthquakes, epidemics, and coups d'état. And now they're returning to their homeland, to a small village in the Périgord region. All their friends have warned them: daily life will seem terribly dull, they'll be incredibly bored, the adventures are over! But what if, on the contrary, a new kind of journey awaited them? The observation is simple: madmen, poets, naive people, good people, bad people—you encounter them everywhere. But what gives this chronicle its strength and originality is that the author has chosen to seek out humanity in all its uniqueness, its perversity, its tenderness, whether in Baghdad or Périgueux. Never shying away from poking fun at them, thanks to its uncompromising writing style, the author draws the reader into an assembly of unforgettable, disheveled, and talkative characters. Like a parliament of owls. We rejoice in their adventures, shudder at their betrayals, and laugh a lot. Publication date: June 1, 2023. Order now
