Ru
“The truth is, one day, our whole world will rise up on its own and there is nothing we can do about it.”
Ru is a gigantic creature that collapsed on a coastal region and crushed it completely in its fall.
One day, a man has the idea to explore the carcass of the beast-thought to be dead-and to transform it into a liveable land. Ru’s body becomes home to roads, lakes, buildings, a railway... and humans.
Despite the utopian promises of a brand new civilisation, human beings are repeating the same mistakes. Continuing to live without thinking about the consequences of their actions on the ecosystem. Continuing to create and worsen social disparities: in the upper body of the creature live the better-off individuals; in the lower limbs, the most destitute are crowding in.
In the heart of a perverted nature and in a climate of political and social violence, three central characters live-survive:
- Agathe, born in Cumiga, who becomes more and more politically extreme-to the point of joining a clandestine political organization, Renard Rouge.
- Y, “Youssoupha”, a child refugee who deals with the hostile migration policy of Ru's government.
- Alvid, a filmmaker who goes in search of his lover who disappeared inside the beast. He decides to make a documentary about Ru when he, too, gets lost.
And in the muscular interstices of Ru’s body, it is discovered that she is not dead. Only asleep...
“Now that we can no longer pretend we don't know that Ru is going to wake up, what are we going to do?”
Press
“Original and committed, Camille Leboulanger's novel uses fantasy to put into perspective burning social issues, questioning our lifestyle and how it changes the world. An eminently political work which seduces by the relevance of its reflection.”
Le Bibliocosme