A posthumous novel by Christian Bobin, written until the last moments of his life from hospital, is to be published in early 2024, Gallimard editions announced on Monday.
“Begun at his home in Le Creusot in July 2022, continued on his hospital bed during the two months preceding his death on November 23, 2022 in Saône-et-Loire, Le Murmure belongs to these extreme works written in extreme conditions,” indicates the publisher in its publication program. Gallimard sees in this text “the trace of a race between love and death”.
Christian Bobin died at the age of 71, a month and a half after the publication of a thousand-page anthology entitled Les Différentes Régions du ciel, and the last novel published during his lifetime, Le Muguet rouge.
The writer, essayist and poet told AFP: “I love these two labels that are stuck to me: simple at the risk of being naive, and obscure at the risk of being hermetic.”