The block (novel)

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The block (original title Le Bloc ) is a novel by the French writer Jérôme Leroy . It was published in 2011 in the Série noire of the Éditions Gallimard . In 2017 Edition Nautilus published the German translation by Cornelia Wend. It reached third place in the International category in the selection of the German Crime Prize 2018.

The two protagonists of the novel are leading figures of a fictional right-wing extremist party, the Bloc Patriotique , which is modeled on the French Front National . Antoine, the educated husband of the party leader, is nominated for political offices in the event of an upcoming government participation. Stanko, the brutal leader of a paramilitary security service, is one of the legacies that the block wants to get rid of with the deployment of a death squad.

content

France is in a state of emergency: the riots in the banlieues , the French suburbs, are increasing in violence. There are already more than 750 deaths. The Bloc Patriotique , once founded by the rumbling citizen fright Roland Dorgelles and now run by his daughter Agnès, is steadily gaining popularity and is about to join a government coalition. Agnès wants to negotiate ten ministerial posts at a secret nightly meeting with government representatives. But before taking power, it is necessary to remove some legacy issues from the radical early phase of the bloc. One of these is Stéphane Stankowiak, known as Stanko, the head of the party’s internal security service GPP, a paramilitary organization that does not shrink from murder in its actions. Stanko's own protégé, Ravenne, is also given the task of eliminating his boss.

In very different places, Antoine Maynard, Agnès' husband, who should become State Secretary or Minister if they join the government, and Stanko look back on their mutual past. Antoine is waiting for his wife to return home in a luxurious Parisian apartment, while Stanko hides from his murderers in a shabby hotel. Antoine comes from a good background, is intelligent and educated, and felt drawn to the temptingly dangerous masterminds of fascism from an early age . But he only got into organized right-wing radicalism through Agnès, then the daughter of the great old man behind the Bloc, now his leader and still with a charisma that casts a spell over Antoine. Stanko has Polish roots and comes from a humble background. He joined skinheads early on and had the right-wing Commando Excalibur tattooed on his bald head. In the brutal male societies he found not only the intoxication of power and brutality, but also the opportunity to sublimate his homosexual tendencies.

As different as the men from very different milieus are, they are united by a long-standing friendship, hardened in numerous street battles with anti-fascists. Antoine regrets the victim Stankos, even if he can not resist its necessity. Stanko, on the other hand, does not hold against Antoine for being the winner of the internal party upheavals, while he is one of the losers, as has been his whole life. When Stanko is fed up with his game of hide and seek in the morning, he armed his hunter Ravenne on the street and takes him with him to death. Antoine slept with Agnès on her return. Now he fears loneliness when there is hardly any time for him in the future. Ultimately, he muses, he “became a fascist because of a woman's cunt”.

background

According to Jérôme Leroy's epilogue for the German edition, The Block is influenced by the French neo-polar trend , which was brought to life by Jean-Patrick Manchette and which Dashiell Hammett's American storytelling tradition of the detective novel has translated into contemporary French historiography with a decidedly politically left-wing orientation . However, Leroy limits the fact that, with regard to the strengthening of the political right, “the classic antifascist thought patterns alone are no longer sufficient to understand a phenomenon that has assumed such dimensions on the entire European continent.” Leroy was aware of in his novel elements of classical tragedy were also adopted, such as the three Aristotelian units , the unity of time, place and action. The action takes place in a single night, the night before the patriotic bloc came to power, and the main characters almost always remain in one place.

Despite the danger of the reader's empathy for the characters in the novel, Leroy did not report the plot in an all too easily moralizing external view and he-form, but alternately from the first-person and you-form, which enables an internal view of the thoughts of the extreme political right . According to Katharina Granzin, the outer shape already points to the different life perspectives of the two protagonists: Stanko, who has no reflective distance, processes life directly and mainly through physical experiences in the first person. Antoine, the intellectual and nihilist , enters into a dialogue with himself in the you form and mockingly observes himself from the outside.

When it came out in France, the block was also read as a roman a clef, in which many allusions to party officials and internal party disputes of the Front National can be found. So, of course, Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter Marine Le Pen were the godfathers of the characters Roland and Agnès Dorgelle, who dyed her hair black in the novel. However, according to his own admission, Leroy had to "pixelate" the French reality and his researched facts for legal reasons. This also made the novel “more timeless and archetypal” and describes a scenario that could also occur in other places, as Leroy emphasizes, in Germany as well. For Leroy, the portrayal of reality in a noir novel is the “royal road of social criticism ”.

reception

Le Bloc received the Prix Michel-Lebrun 2012, a prize awarded by the city of Le Mans for crime literature. The German translation achieved third place in the international category in the selection of the German Crime Prize 2018. According to jury member Günther Grosser, "Jérôme Leroy writes in two constantly changing narrative streams full of intensity and with a commitment that goes to the limits of what is bearable."

According to Peter Körte, The Block is “not just a well-built thriller, but also an ambitious literary attempt to capture the imaginations and motifs of a right-wing milieu in detail without immediately encountering it with routine rejection and indignation.” Alex Rühle reads the novel as “ a universal parable on the rise of right-wing populism and as an oppressive requiem on democracy. "For Sonja Hartl, the" outstanding novel is a devastating, realistic and excellently told treatise about violence, about the dying of ideologies - and about the history of France of the past 25 years. "Werner Bebber advises:" Anyone who wants to get an idea of ​​the attraction of the Front National in France should rush into the irritating reading of this book, which is at least as much a political thriller as a detective novel. "

Marcus Müntefering finds the novel “whether the cruelty described without distance is sometimes difficult to endure […]” and “inside view and warning at the same time” and also an invitation “not to ignore, not to be silent”. For Antje Deistler, on the other hand, the novel is “difficult to digest”, but it leaves her indifferent. He “suffers from information overload and the cold that he wants.” For Katharina Granzin, the story is “not a pleasant journey. But it does offer insights that are not just around the corner. ” Christian Bommarius calls it“ the book of the hour ”that doesn't need to be discussed in feature sections“ to prove its relevance - the catastrophe that Leroy describes , is too close to the present to be explained as a vision of the future. "

The French feature film Chez nous by Lucas Belvaux with Émilie Dequenne , André Dussollier , Guillaume Gouix , Catherine Jacob and Anne, premiered in 2017, was based on the scenario of Le Bloc but with an independent plot about a young social worker who is being built up to become the top candidate of the Bloc Patriotique Marivin in the lead roles. Leroy worked on the script and took characters from his novel such as Agnès and Stanko into the film. Weeks before it was released, the film sparked violent reactions from supporters and party leaders of the Front National in France. For example, the vice-president of the party, Florian Philippot, believed he could already see from the trailer that it was “clearly an anti-FN film”.

expenditure

  • Jérôme Leroy: Le Bloc . Collection Série Noire. Gallimard, Paris 2011, ISBN 978-2-07-078642-8 .
  • Jérôme Leroy: The block . Translated from the French by Cornelia Wend. With an afterword by the author to the German edition. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-96054-037-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Jérôme Leroy: A novel about the extreme right or the risks of the profession . Epilogue in: The Block . Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-96054-038-0 , without page numbers.
  2. ↑ a b Katharina Granzin: Two men who became fascists . In: the daily newspaper of September 2, 2017.
  3. ↑ a b c Alex Rühle: Language of violence . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of April 3, 2017.
  4. ↑ a b c Annabelle Hirsch, Peter Körte: A nightmare comes true . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 5, 2017.
  5. ↑ Le Bloc at the Editions Gallimard .
  6. ↑ 34th German Crime Prize 2018 at krimilexikon.de.
  7. ^ Sonja Hartl: One night in France . In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur on March 27, 2017.
  8. ↑ Werner Bebber: The future is written in blood . In: Der Tagesspiegel from April 20, 2017.
  9. ↑ Marcus Müntefering: “Became a fascist because of a woman's cunt” . In: Der Spiegel from March 9, 2017.
  10. ↑ Antje Deistler: French thriller with great topicality . In: Deutschlandfunk from April 19, 2017.
  11. ↑ Christian Bommarius : Journey to the end of the night . In: Frankfurter Rundschau of April 21, 2017.