Kolkhoz, the title of the new novel byEmmanuel Carrère (Paris, 1957), published in Catalan and Spanish by Anagrama, alludes to a communal form of Soviet agricultural exploitation, but, for the Carrère family, the word described the moment when Hélène Carrère de Encausse's three children would gather with their mother in bed to have sex. It is fitting that the title addresses both the history of the Soviet Union and the Carrère family's intimacy, the two axes intertwined in this novel that the writer dedicates to his mother. Hélène Carrère de Encausse (1929-2023), daughter of Russian and Georgian exiles who became the great historian on the Soviet Union in Europe, an expert Kremlinologist and revered in France.

The death of the mother of French writer Emmanuel Carrère It had to culminate in a book. The inevitable recollection of the past that accompanies the death of a parent was the lever that propelled him, once he had digested the highly sensitive material, to write the mixture of chronicle and family autobiography that is KolkhozA book full of surprising relatives—Carrère has a cousin who is the president of Georgia!—and in which he himself would be like a kind of first cousin ofA Russian novel and of Limonov, two of the peaks of Carrère's work. With a translation by Ferran Ràfols Gesa that sounds wonderful, Kolkhoz It revisits Russian themes and even brings back some of the characters from those books, but it plays on different ground, that of family history linked to the history of the 20th century: can the description of a private room tell of a historical shift? In the land of Georges Duby, the answer is "of course," and Carrère proves it beyond a doubt.

What goes on behind the Kremlin walls? This was the question that, during the long existence of the Soviet Union (1917-1991), certain figures known as the Kremlin strove daily to answer. KremlinologistsThey supposedly knew everything there was to know about a secretive and complex regime. When the time came, it became clear that they knew almost nothing: the collapse of the Soviet Union caught them completely by surprise. Kremlinologist Europe's most celebrated woman, Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, was a perfect example of that group blinded by its own prejudices.

"Truman Capote said that when he began to approach the real story that would be the center ofIn cold blood, suddenly had a doubt, the feeling that maybe he was going to run away: it ended up taking five years of his life, five years of nightmares. For me, it took me thirst." The French writer explains this. Emmanuel Carrère, about the book The adversary (Anagrama, translated by Marta Marfany). Around Sant Jordi, I discovered that Filmin had dedicated a section to Book Day. Under the name Filmin books, you will still find new documentaries related to literature. There are some about Gabriel Ferrater, Stephen King and Georges Perec, and although I was tempted to start with him, my unconditional passion for Emmanuel Carrère and The adversary, surely his most emblematic work, made me opt for Carrère, the writer and the murderer (Camille Juza, 2024).