Nicolas Mathieu: "I have done everything unimaginable to betray my social class."

BarcelonaThe French writer Nicolas Mathieu (Épinal, 1978), winner of the Goncourt Prize in 2018 with Their children after each other (published in Spanish by Alianza), she began writing short texts about a secret love affair and posted them on Instagram. After reworking and reorganizing them, she created a novel, The open sky (AdN), where she talks about love and desire, and all their ups and downs.

What was the trigger that made you decide to publish a book about a romantic relationship that, at first, you kept secret?

— I first published it on Instagram. They were short texts addressed to a woman with whom I was in a secret relationship. It was difficult for me to bear that secrecy. Writing was a way to make that relationship exist through literature. With this woman, we decided we didn't want these texts to disappear or that moment to die, and we decided to publish the book. It was like a gift, making that hidden story become something different. I thought this relationship would fail, because I'm melancholic; I always believe that everything is destined to disappear.

In the book, he talks a lot about freedom and how difficult it is to be free because of everything that conditions us.

— Yes, there are many factors—geographical, economic, social, political—that can pressure us. Literature, love, and sex are places where we can create our spaces of freedom. Small bubbles within society that we must strive to foster.

You say that literature is sometimes a necropolis.

— I wrote it in a moment of great anger, a moment of emotional despair. In the book, I try to show the exact opposite.

He advises readers not to give up their joy. Who wouldn't want to give it up to?

— They try to manipulate us, force us to follow a path, lead us to a place where we'll be productive, to go on vacation to specific places, to teach us how to work, and how to organize our families. I think the joy of living, joy in Spinoza's sense, is a passion that makes us better. We must always try to preserve our joy and freedom, and this sometimes runs counter to a policy that imposes its power.

With the rise of the far right, is exercising that freedom more difficult than it was a few years ago? Is there a relinquishment of that freedom in favor of authoritarian governments?

— Yes, bad passions thrive. Sad passions, like the rejection of immigration, fear, anger, resentment... There is political polarization, but it's also important that the left has abandoned the working classes, and populist movements have taken advantage of this.

In the book, you talk about your father and his pride in being from the working class. To what extent do you think this has defined you?

— I grew up in a small middle-class family, but my father did come from the working class. He always identified with it. He was very proud of having worked with his hands. He left school when he was 14. Today, I don't belong to this world; I distanced myself from it when I was studying. I didn't have money, but I did have cultural capital. After the Goncourt Prize, I distanced myself even more. For all these reasons, my interests should be bourgeois, but there's a loyalty to the world I come from. When I vote, I vote to defend my father's interests. I did so when I took a stand on pension reform. This reform [French President Emmanuel Macron approved raising the retirement age from the current 62 to 64 without a vote from the National Assembly] affected many men and women like my parents. It harmed them physically, emotionally, and shortened their life expectancy. I've done everything imaginable to betray my class: I've wanted to live better than my parents; I haven't wanted to reproduce their way of life, their tastes, or their opinions. However, now that they're dead, I hear their voices inside me, and it weighs heavily on me when deciding my political choices.

Censorship is increasing. Do you think freedom of expression should have limits?

— It's normal that it's limited by law. In France, hate speech and anti-Semitism are prohibited, for example. However, the limits must be decided collectively, not arbitrarily. I am against arbitrary censorship, whether it comes from the right or the left. The freedom of expression we have today in France is a legacy of many previous struggles and of writers who fought to be independent. We must resist political, religious, and economic pressures... We must make those in power feel ashamed and ridiculous for the censorship they want to impose. We started a movement on social media, asking people to tell us how literature had opened their minds and influenced their sexual experiences. Many men and women wrote to us. We received a thousand texts and published a book. We donated the profits to family planning centers.