Philippe Vasset's 'La Conjuration' Explores the Business of Faith

Philippe Vasset's seventh novel, 'La Conjuration' (Fayard), follows a narrator expert in forgotten urban spaces who works for André, an entrepreneur aiming to create a profitable cult. The book combines documentary research and field investigation, mixing varied writing registers. Vasset continues his exploration of capitalism's cynical manifestations and the city, which he likes to 'turn inside out.' After arms trade and climate change exploitation, he now tackles the faith business. Creating a lucrative cult requires finding a suitable location and defining beliefs and rites, aided by brainstorming and 'an audit of the sectarian market.' However, André's opportunism drives the consultant, moved by idealism, to create a nomadic sect of conspirators whose activity extends across the entire city. The novel connects to Vasset's earlier 'Un Livre blanc,' a narrative of his visits to blank zones on maps of Paris and its suburbs. 'La Conjuration' continues this 'parallel geography' in fictional mode. With blank zones gone, the narrator resorts to nocturnal transgression of the boundary between public and private space, a subversive penetration into the city's unconscious. He discovers the 'erotic of breaking and entering,' traversing empty offices with his conspirators, scrutinizing employee traces, and entering private homes to observe people in the ultimate self-abandonment of sleep.