WITH Night in the heartThe author of Natakh Appana brilliantly turns to the phenomenon of feminicides from the true history of three women -victims of domestic violence. Necessary book.
If you want to start reading a good romance and full of good feelings, stop, it is better to go immediately. Night in the heartThe new book of the novelist of the Mauritian origin of Nathah Appan is a real stick in the knees. At the crossroads of news, autobiography and novel, he made us fall back from the first pages, perfectly written. We even re -read them twice in a row to enjoy every proposal of this extraordinary narrative implementation.
However, they are terrible, these pages: they have three people indicated only by their initials – they hardly deserve – locked in a room that exists only in the head of the author. Three men gathered there because they have something terrible in common. In several years, each of which inflicted physical and verbal violence that he was supposed to love and, animated by murderous rage, each of them came out of the house.
Of these three women, two were killed.
Only Natachi Appana survived, and for many years she preferred to preserve for her dark romantic relationships that she lived when she barely entered growing up and in which she still lived on Mauritius.
Reality is worse than fiction
“I am always starting to write because I am obsessed with a question,” the author explains that we were able to reach at home in Paris. Why does this go like this? Why is this state of affairs? For example, for this book there is my experience, my story, but between men and women there was also a balance of power. These are all these men in order to control their wife in a compulsory way, regardless of their culture, language or education. For what? I did not find an answer, but I wanted to analyze how we dissected the mechanics and understand that it launches. “
In 2021, Chains Daud, the mother of three children living in the environs of Bordeaux, her husband was burned. Yes, horror, and the matter caused a wave in France.
“When I found out the circumstances of the death of Chakhinesis – the way she was expelled, her race and her murder – I was literally challenged,” says Natachi Appana.
Obviously, she realized that a new book was waiting for her, and quickly, she began to explore house violence and feminicides. Because in his own family there was another woman -a victim of this kind of violence: his cousin Emma. There, in Mauritius, newspapers talked very little about this. But one fine morning when she ran in a cowardly, Emma tried the madness of her jealous husband. He deliberately hit her with a complete whip with a family car, and then threw her in the ditch.
Pill the light on
“I often felt that I was writing in the dark,” says Natakha Appana. Not only in the dark, but also from black. I was desperately looking for the light of things, and he came to the portrait of these women in truth who they were, that is, not at all weak or extinct people. They wanted to live in order to move forward, of course, to love again, to educate their children in something else than what their house offered at that time. “
As for whether her book can open her eyes or help some women take a step, the author remains clear: “Not all stories are the same, but one of the points that they often have in common is that women want to leave,” says Natachi Appana. Therefore, I do not think that this is a book that will give the power to leave, because there is already a departure force. I hope that this is a book that will restore the face that erases shame, which women can feel in toxic relationships, the relationship of the clutch. “
Strong, alarming, important work.
Night in the heart
NATHACHA Appanah, Gallimard Editions, 288 pages
