Philippe Lançon is a French journalist and novelist whose work delves into literary criticism, with a particular affinity for Latin American literature. His writing often explores themes of trauma and recovery, exemplified by his powerful account of personal experience with violence. Lançon's style is marked by profound introspection and a literary sensitivity that invites readers to contemplate the complexities of the human condition. His prose is characterized by its precision and emotional resonance, establishing him as a significant voice in contemporary French literature.
The narrative offers a poignant exploration of resilience and recovery following the traumatic experience of surviving the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack. The author shares his deeply personal journey of healing, grappling with the aftermath of violence while striving to rebuild his life. Through his honest reflections, he delves into themes of loss, identity, and the quest for meaning in the face of adversity.
Paris. January 7, 2015, two terrorists attacked the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. Philippe Lancon, seriously wounded, was among the survivors. This intense life experience upends his relationship to the world, to writing, to reading, to love and to friendship. It took him a year before he could return to writing, a year of frequent reconstructive surgeries, to work through his experiences and their aftermath. As he attempts to reconstruct his life on the page, Lancon rereads Proust, Thomas Mann, Kafka, and others in search of guidance and healing. Disturbance is not an essay on terrorism nor is it a witness's account of Charlie Hebdo, and it's certainly not a feel good book. The attack and what followed make up a small portion of Lancon's narrative, which instead seeks to provide the most honest and intimate reproduction possible of the interior experience of a man who was a victim, who suffered a war wound in a country at peace. Disturbance is a book about transformation, about one man's shifting relationship to time, to truth, and to his own body.