Jean Rouaud produces an « X-ray of his time », this time that declared « the death of the novel », just when he made the choice of writing novels.

He describes what founded his imagination, from early childhood, as a « propensity for not being into the world ».

His birth as a writer was a contingent meeting, kind of tuchè that enables him to publish and to « fertilize his imagination, like a field, with some real ». In the act of writing, he finds the possibility to « grasp the real » in an instantaneous and vivid image and finally come « into world ».

Works quoted:

• Un peu la guerre, (la Vie Poétique, 3), Éd. Grasset, 2014
• Le Monde à peu près, Éd. de Minuit, 1996
• Les Champs d'honneur, Éd. de Minuit, prix Goncourt, 1990