I wanted to write a book which speaks about the difference, of the difference of the ones compared to the others and of the one compared to the other. I am always also unpleasing with the lesson of moral, the idea to give an answer worries me. I find amusing more to put questions. If at a time given an answer were to come, it would have interest only if it involved another question. In And if it were true I put in the coma a woman whose spirit is detached from the body, of this fact there was one alone person who saw it. As opposed to what many people believed, it was not a book on the coma, nor of science fiction. It was a metaphor on what occurs when somebody fall in love, it starts to see things that nobody other sees. With Seven days for an eternity it is a little the same method, in this book I wanted to speak about the difference. There is full with differences, he is some there even in the difference. By approaching this topic, one can speak about religion, ethnos group or company. I am neither ethnologist, nor sociologist but I wanted to take pleasure to tell a history which speaks about the difference in itself. In this novel it is about the difference in the meeting of a man and a woman who had envisaged neither to meet, nor to be to confront with their own difference.

From where the idea to send on ground an angel and a demon...

Completely. It is the idea of a meeting of two opposite. From there it was interesting to know what it was going to occur of this opposition, were going they to be destroyed or be built. I think that the treatment of the difference produces only the destruction or construction. Each time one is confronted with a difference, or one built, or one demolishes.

Become writer with success whereas you are that with your third novel, you had certainly in your course several manuscripts before And if it were true . Can you locate us the moment when the desire for writing started on your premise?

And if it true stay is the first manuscript which I sent to an editor. When my son had between five and nine years, I had taken the practice to tell him a tale which I invented every evening. It was one very privileged moment. When it was nine years old the interest decreased appreciably for him whereas it grew enormously at home. I had at this period triple envies, that to tell a history with the man who it was going to become, that to prolong the moment with him while it slept. I had the desire to play the foot of nose at time, i.e. to divide through this first novel, of the emotions with my son, but in the idea that when it would read it it the same age would have that I had while I wrote it. And that because we would have the same age during the time of a reading, we would be the best friends of the world at this time.

Seven days for an eternity is dedicated to your grandmother like with your son, can one deduce from it that you always write for him...

My motivation did not change, I to still write for him. At the beginning of the writing of my first novel, one evening I looked at it sleeping and I raised this question which I do not cease asking me, that of knowing what I bring to him in the life. Which is my contribution in its blooming as a father compared to what it absorbs of the company? I was surprised this day by the force of the feeling which I felt by looking at it sleeping.

I belong to a generation in which it of separated there much, of divorced, single people and lonelinesses, where a good number gave up the act to like. I realize that when his own child is looked at the proof is absolute, it does not have there a judgement. There are all the things of the daily newspaper which one meets in love, of the blows of mouths, angers, sadnesses, of the joys, but never a second ago of abandonment or renouncement of the feelings. There, it was almost a biological interrogation. When one has children this proof to be able to like is in front of us tous.les.jours, therefore one must be it also in love within the meaning of the couple.

It is a question of control whose answer must be at the root-even of this behavior.

It was necessary that my son comes in the world, that it has five years and me thirty five so that I include/understand the direction of this question.

At which time of the day do write you in general?

I write all the day, sometimes the night. I write eight month per annum. I reflected and I manufacture the history the other months.

Don't the environment you it topicality influence T-it not the course of the history which you write?

There is only what occurs in the novel which can influence because it arrives from the moments in the history that one had not envisaged, of the reversals or the ideas which are born from the screen of the writing. At the time when I tackle the writing, I have all the history at the head, I tell it.

How do you organize your cycle of writing in term of publications?

I leave a book every eighteen months approximately. But it is not planned, I write because I have ideas. I would never make it to fill a contract. When I finish the writing of a novel, I in general have the idea of next which, moreover, pushes a little to finish the precedent. Then a period ago of maturation, documentation and research on the idea to make a history with characters of it. This period lasts four to five months and makes then place with the writing which will extend on eight to ten months.

Which are your literary influences?

My literary influences are very vast. That goes from Christian Bobin while passing by Heminguay, Edgar Poe, Prévert, while going in the American literature of Stephen King etc. I am a papivore, I hate the idea that one wants to confine me in a kind. There are authors of which I like certain books and of which others did not touch me.

What impassions you in the life...

The cinema, I am a large film bouffor.

Which is the last film which marked you?

Frida of Julie Taylor and 25th Hour Spike Lee which literally exploded me, it is a head of work to be seen in VO. I was not very Spike Lee but there it is the most beautiful film which it made. Without calling into question his talent, I found it very nervous in these preceding films, I adore the idea that one defends a cause but I find that more the dialogue is moderate better the cause is defended.

Which is the question which you do not like that one poses to you?

I do not like the questions which refer to my private life. I never answer it.

Collected by N.A. (March 2003)

Sept jours pour une éternité