Jacques Henric reviews new novels by Judith Brouste and Olivier Rolin

In a feuilleton for artpress, Jacques Henric reviews two recent French novels: Judith Brouste's "Ruines de Vienne" (Flammarion) and Olivier Rolin's "Bakou, derniers jours" (Seuil). Brouste's book contrasts Vienna and Paris as cities in moral and physical decay, drawing on her own experiences with illness and love. The narrative evokes 1970s Paris as seen by Guy Debord, with encounters in working-class neighborhoods. Rolin's travelogue documents the dilapidated state of Baku, Azerbaijan, where he returns to the site of a fictional suicide he had imagined in an earlier book. Despite the grim setting, Rolin's writing is lively, humorous, and elegiac, paying homage to his late friend Gérard Bobillier.