Jean Echenoz: "A spy office wanted to place microphones on insects to obtain secret information"

BarcelonaThe passage of time has not diminished Jean Echenoz's shyness, nor has it managed to turn him into a cynical or disenchanted author. Born in Orange in 1947, the French writer has been one of the headliners at this year's Mot festival, but before that he visited Barcelona with a new book under his arm. Bristol (Raig Verd, 2026; translated by Anna Casassas) narrates a few decisive months in the life of Robert Bristol, a film director who is finishing the shoot of his latest film. It features effervescent actresses, established ones and those semi-retired, a solicitous but inconstant lover, an inspired policeman, a blackmailing general from South Africa, a bestselling writer who lives in a palace, and a long list of supporting characters, human and animal, who further expand Echenoz's universe. The usual taste for details, the author's undeniable craftsmanship, and a sense of humor more subtle than our times make Bristol a pleasant and recommendable reading experience.

The protagonist of Bristol

is a film director in his twilight years who, nevertheless, is excited about his next project.

— It would be a bit like me, if instead of making books I had dedicated myself to cinema.

I have seen him in better shape than the director.

— Thank you very much!

The relationship between his literature and cinema goes back a long way. The Greenwich Meridian (1979), his first novel, already hinted at it from the start, with that scene where it seems like a camera is filming what we are reading. Does Bristol return to that first creative gesture, giving prominence to a filmmaker?

— I hadn't thought of that until now. In many of my novels, I've tried to apply cinematic language to literary language, as a way of playing and expanding the possibilities of what I was explaining. Sometimes I've wondered if one of my books could be turned into a film, and some people have told me no, because the film already exists within the book. In a way, they are right. Cinema is a sweet obsession for me. I can't help but return to it. But I don't plan it, I'm not aware of it.

Is there any movie that particularly dazzled him when he was little?

— If I think about my childhood, I remember Eisenstein. My father sent me to see, when I was still quite young, Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky. Both marked me. I also remember the films of Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock.

While studying he lived through the explosion of the Nouvelle Vague.

— I don't remember much about the Nouvelle Vague. Of all the directors who came out of there, the ones I appreciate the most are Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rozier. The latter is little known outside of France.

He graduated in Sociology. Why?

— I studied sociology to avoid liberal arts degrees. I loved literature too much. I suppose it was too private a territory to share.

Do you think there is any element of the career that is reflected in your narrative work?

— Perhaps the fieldwork I did for some subjects allowed me to acquire a taste for observing places and spaces that is reflected in the books. There are also readings I did in those years that have been important. The studies of Erving Goffman, for example, helped me to stage daily life through fiction.

In Bristol explains a train journey of the protagonist towards Nevers. On the way, he notices how the transition between the city of Paris and the countryside is not simple: "The periphery complicates the project, it is never a clean break, there are urbanizations that contradict silos, company car parks that refute crops, a discount supermarket discredits a fertilizer".

— I love places that don't fit the canons of beauty.

His parents passed on their passion for the arts to him, right?

— Yes. My parents were good readers, they listened to a lot of music and were interested in the arts. It was lucky to grow up in such an open family.

Where does their sense of humor come from?

— From the need to distance ourselves from situations and characters. Humor brings a smile to my face as I write, I hope to be able to convey it to the readers.

I would say it appears more in books set in the present than in the trilogy formed by the novels dedicated to the composer Maurice Ravel (Ravel, 2006), to the athlete Emil Zátopek (Running, 2008) and to the inventor Nikola Tesla (Lightning, 2010).

— In those three books I started from real lives and they allowed me to follow a different rhythm than that required by novels. Sometimes you need to go out for some air. That's what I did with Ravel, Running and Lightning Bolts. Although I continue to be interested in creating portraits of real characters, and I would like to add a woman to the trio – I'm still looking for her – I abandoned it when it stopped being difficult for me to write them. In literature, when things are too easy for you, it means you are not on the right track.

In Bristol explores once again an antiheroic character.

— I am more interested in people who suffer from work, love, or existential problems than in those who overcome them. Happy people are terribly boring.

In this novel, I seemed to detect some winks to previous novels. There is a chapter narrated from the point of view of a fly. The spy flies were crucial for solving the intrigue of Lac (1989).

— A spy agency wanted to plant microphones on insects to obtain secret information. When I read this news almost forty years ago, it seemed to me that I had to translate it into a novel, even if it meant taking it a bit to the extreme, as happens in Lac.

The love for flies seems a declaration of intent about her literature, which focuses on often minuscule details and dignifies secondary characters, animals, or objects.

— It's simpler than that: in Bristol I simply wanted a fly to appear and for it to serve me to narrate reality from many points of view, as if we were seeing it through its fragmented eyes.

Asia makes its presence felt again. If in Special Envoy (2016), North Korea was very important, here South Korea appears through a journalist who has the recording of an interview with a writer erased. Enviada especial (2016), Corea del Nord era molt important, aquí apareix Corea del Sud a partir d'un periodista a qui se li esborra la gravació de l'entrevista a una escriptora.

— The presence of South Korea is, here, testimonial. In Enviada especial, on the other hand, I focused on North Korea because it seems to me a kind of infernal and autistic country, where its inhabitants are isolated from the world, an atrocious place where there are still labor camps.

In Bristol there are several chapters set in Limpopo, the South African province where the director is shooting the film. It is one more place on the long list of countries that appear in his novels. Where does his love for sending characters to remote places come from?

— As a child, I had a puzzle of the world and I loved to look at it carefully. Meditating on the names of the countries, my imagination was awakened.

Where would you like to travel through fiction, soon?

— I don't know for sure yet, but maybe in some Latin American country.

In 2017, during his penultimate visit to Barcelona, he said that every 30 or 40 years we announce the death of the novel. What does he think of those words now?

— I'll keep you company. Fiction has existed since time immemorial. This has to do with the status of the novel, which has always been weak. In the seventies, when I started writing, with the rise of experimentalism and literary theory, the death of the novel was already being discussed. I am confident that imagination will not be extinguished.

Is there room, in today's world, for filmmakers like Robert Bristol?

— There is always a little hope for the failures. I hope so.