Waking, it was Noon
The aim of this collection is to paint a relatively complete picture of present day society and its general orientation. The stories all make reference to top news items and will be common knowledge to the majority of readers who keep up with current events. They have not been reproduced word for word but altered for the benefit of the story and the thinking behind it.
Each narrative takes up a theme (police violence, surveillance, social instability, education, justice, etc.) They intend to be for the most part optimistic. The characters in question find solutions possible at their own level or resist from where they are.
The poignant stories at the start are then followed by some rougher, more disturbing and even bitter ones. The last sentence of the collection, where the main character hopes he will wake up, brings us full circle back to the title in this gradual drifting towards an uncertain future. The title is taken from a poem by Rimbaud, Aube (Dawn), in Les Illuminations.
Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire 2006, in the short story collection category, Le Monde tous droits réservés (The World: All Rights Reserved), published by Le Bélial.
