"It's embarrassing, sometimes, to say the name of the opposite of evil, because it's a word that's... perhaps too overused, somewhat worn out." The word that The writer Joan-Lluís Lluís felt some regret in pronouncing It was, of course, goodnessHe mentioned it to me in an interview I did with him about his latest novel. A rain song (Club Editor). It is a moving book that tells the story of Ella-Calla, an orangutan who is kidnapped from the forest where she lives in Borneo and suffers a series of "calamities," to put it mildly, inflicted by humankind. The light in this story is provided by an elderly woman who, the writer explains, allowed him to breathe while writing; A rain song It's a short book, but it's the one that has been hardest for him to write, surely because it's based on a real event: everything that happens to the orangutan, Luis read about in a news article. We won't give away any spoilers; it's impossible to explain more of the book, but the moment when this character appears is important—that old woman who also gives readers a breath of fresh air, because she represents kindness. Luis considers it very necessary; he told me about kindness: "It's a very powerful weapon, because it can really change so many things. When we do an act of kindness toward someone, we fix the world a little, in a humble way, but, moreover, we do ourselves good." And yet, the regret he mentioned at the beginning: "I've seen it with this novel, saying goodness "It seems a little strange to me."

"Nine orangutans are sleeping in the hold of a ship. They sleep with moans and occasional shudders as the drug they've been injected with begins to fade, also with slow movements limited by the bars of the cages they're locked in. One cage for all, and this night is dead for all." Thus it begins. A rain song, the eleventh novel by Joan-Lluís Lluís (Perpignan, 1963). It tells the story of the life of an orangutan, baptized as Ella-Calla, from the cage where she has been temporarily deprived of her freedom on the island of Borneo to the forest where she can reunite with her relatives.

Summer is coming to its final weeks and, with the change of season, so does the rentrée Literary. September is traditionally a month packed with new releases in the publishing market, many of which mark the start of the school year. We've selected the 25 most promising.