Like every year, the Médianes team shares its literary favorites with you. On the agenda: walking, laziness, desire… and a touch of piracy.
Flâneuse, Lauren Elkin
« Let me walk. Let me feel the life flowing through me and around me. The city awakens, excites, makes you move, advance, think, want to get involved. The city is life », writes Lauren Elkin here. Usually, strolling, in the sense of walking aimlessly, freely and with curiosity through the streets of the city, is more of a guy thing. So in this journal of movement, the author questions the place of women (past and present) in urban space. She rehabilitates this forbidden figure of the woman who walks alone. She recounts strolling as a moment of introspection and sensation: what does this church evoke in me, this odd façade, this window? Who lived here? Who passes by? What do I hear, how do the surroundings move through me, how do people brush against me? For a woman, strolling is still today a transgressive gesture. You take your time, you occupy space. I love streets and I love women's gaze on the outside world. So I really enjoyed this book.
Marine Slavitch, section editor journalist
The Eighth Life, Nino Haratischwili
I'm writing this recommendation to you from Tbilissi, and returning to this complex, paradoxical, unforgettable and unique city always reminds me of this book. A dense read, but I promise you'll spend sleepless nights devouring it. It's a family saga that traces the generations of a Georgian family through the twentieth century, as fascinating from a historical point of view as it is from a human one.
Sasha Tyan, video journalist and editor-in-chief of the Sphera network
Laziness for All, Hadrien Klent
Émilien Long, Nobel Prize winner in economics, writes an essay about the possibility of transitioning to a 15-hour work week. The idea gains traction, and Émilien Long becomes a candidate in the presidential election, surrounded by a team you wouldn't expect at first glance. A delightful, inspiring novel that makes you want to believe in and engage in politics. Another society is possible, and it's not entirely out of reach. A sequel, La Vie est à nous, was released in 2023.
Baptiste Thevelein, co-founder and CEO
Carnes, Esther Teillard
At 23, Esther Teillard arrives with Carnes, a neopunk and unfiltered novel. We encounter disturbing women, barely ever soft or kind. It speaks of bodies, ugly mothers, and daughters searching for themselves. The writing is unflinching, and the whole thing reeks of the guts of Marseille and Paris. At the heart of this mess, the book above all speaks to us of female desire — twisted, violent, and sometimes sad — expressed without judgment. This book shook me, and I loved it.
Fanny Blanchard, marketing project manager on work-study program
For a pirate ecology — And we will be free, Fatima Ouassak
Published well before the latest French political upheaval, Fatima Ouassak rightly returns to the place of ecology in political discourse aimed at working-class neighborhoods. Given how little has evolved on these questions since its release, this book is a timely reality check. Ecology, antiracism, urban planning, activism, immigration… Fatima Ouassak calls for reclaiming power within a colonial-capitalist system. A system fed by politicians and their rhetoric, which continues to sideline working-class neighborhoods. Somewhere between an essay and a history, this book should be required reading for everyone engaged on this issue, and for everyone who should be.
Dorine Planté, Senior Project Manager
Our powerful friendships, Alice Raybaud
What if we made more room for friendship in our lives? In Our Powerful Friendships, journalist Alice Raybaud explores these bonds too often pushed aside by romantic relationships or family, even though they can be places of care, joy, and solidarity. Through intimate stories and political references, she shows how friendship—especially between women—becomes a force of resistance against social norms. A powerful book that invites us to place affection and community at the heart of our life choices. A book to read and give to all your friends.
Marine Doux, Co-founder, Editorial Director
The Divided Dial, On the Shortwaves
And for those who prefer listening to reading, I can only recommend this podcast series (in English) by Katie Thornton. Made in collaboration with the excellent On The Media show, which observes each week what's happening on the other side of the Atlantic, this series delves into the history of shortwave radio, distant cousins of AM and FM frequencies. Spanning utopias reminiscent of the early internet, audio enthusiasts passionate about communicating with people around the world, pirate radio and cult offshoots and misinformation, this series is fascinating and incredibly binge-worthy on the beach or during a digestive walk after a long family meal.
Quentin Ariès, journalist
To go further
- Feminist testimonies, horror stories, fragments of love… Here are our summer 2024 reading recommendations,
- And to read our summer 2023 literary picks, head this way. On the menu: zines about British folklore, a story around the Aubervilliers fort, and a cycling journey from Plouër to Tehran.
