La Littérature comme jeu : Pourquoi Bologne d’Alain Farah

Abstract

This article first outlines the characteristics of Alain Farah’s project in his latest novel, Pourquoi Bologne, in which his auto-fictional narrative develops out of an experimental approach that questions what literature can and cannot achieve. Farah’s writing thereby casts doubt on our capacity to account for the modern world and life in it. In its second part, the article engages in a detailed commentary of two passages in the novel to show how such a conception of literature conditions the use of writing and compositional strategies that create the impression of a game whose outcome is unclear but nevertheless worth playing.