Stéphane Bérard's Debut Novel 'Le problème martien' Reviewed

Stéphane Bérard, an artist turned writer, has published his first novel 'Le problème martien', reviewed by Éric Mangion in artpress. The book is described as a science-fiction work that subverts genre conventions, set in a paranoid space where a cave-dwelling people live under a consortium that is both unsettling and pathetic. The protagonist Chet is bored, and the narrative unfolds as a weaponless epic, structured as a counter-visit. Mangion notes the absence of technological effects or quantum neuropsychic futures; instead, each scene is cut with precision, and each sentence stands as an autonomous image. The novel evokes an improbable meeting of Italo Calvino and Jacques Rozier, with a mysterious title that seems to solve an impossible equation. The story ends in a near-nostalgia for a motionless, dreamlike journey, a gentle rural psychosis, becoming existential and abstract. Mangion calls the novel an 'ovni' (UFO) and recommends reading it exhausted or not, in full flight, with or without momentum.