She leaves Bambois on the heights of Lapoutroie this Friday, April 17 to go to the Paris Book Festival. There will certainly be talk of the publishing house that she has just left after 15 years, eight books, a December Prize and a Femina Prize.
“Olivier Nora was the guarantor of the independence of the house”
Learning this Tuesday, April 14 of the dismissal of Olivier Nora, boss of Grasset since 2000, Claudie Hunzinger, 86, very affected by the news, immediately sent him a message to tell him that she would be at his side. “Within an hour, I knew that I no longer had a publisher, that I would not stay. He was a rare intellectual, a literary man, of great courtesy, it was a pleasure to work with him, to sometimes entrust him with the first reading of a manuscript. He could have a very interesting point of view and help to continue, he was not a merchant. »
Of course, it had not escaped the authors’ notice that Grasset had been in the fold of Vincent Bolloré’s Hachette Livre group since 2023: “We knew it was risky, but Olivier Nora was the guarantor of the house’s independence. We knew that with him we were safe, that nothing bad would happen. » For Claudie Hunzinger and the others, his forced departure changes the situation.
Beyond the case of the publisher, for her it is the symptom of a global drift: “As an Alsatian and a novelist, I looked into the history, that of my parents, that of the Annexation, I learned that you had to choose your side as soon as you could. Today is the time to choose, we cannot accept such violent, authoritarian gestures, which deny all freedom, it is not possible. » His latest book, The Elephant, has just been published, by Grasset. She will also be at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg (Mamcs) on June 6 for a reading conference with the actress Anne-Cécile Moser. And she knows that her next book no longer has a publisher.
The writer from Strasbourg took “an anvil on the head” when he learned of the dismissal of Olivier Nora: “He was at the same time the backbone, the soul, the brain of Grasset. It was truly an explosion for the employees, the perpetrators, it was incredibly violent and above all totally unjustified. It’s a house that does well, is respected, and wins literary prizes, there was no reason. »
“It’s a house that does well, is respected, and wins literary prizes, there was no reason”
And to denounce the process: “We are not puppets, there is a red line that must not be crossed. We cannot do anything without trampling on culture and professionalism. » He published five books in this house, including a Renaudot. Latest News from Eros a collection of eleven original erotic short stories, which he is directing, with authors such as Anne Berest, Leïla Slimani, Kamel Daoud and himself, to be published on May 13 – it should be presented in Strasbourg at the end of September at the Ideal Libraries – will be the last. His next novel, “contemporary tragicomedy”, a bit in the tradition of Revolutions by Jacques Koskas is now looking for a publisher.
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