The latest addition to my website is Lydie Salvayre‘s La Puissance des mouches (The Power of Flies).
The unnamed narrator is in prison for murder but who did he murder? In his one-sided discussions with a judge, lawyer, psychiatrist and prison guard we learn that he hated his father who brutalised our narrator and his mother, frequently beating both and driving the mother to an early grave. He worked at a museum devoted to Blaise Pascal where he despised his boss, his colleagues and most of the visitors and was not averse to letting then know. Like his father he was cruel to his wife. He disliked his neighbour. In short there was no-one who was spared his wrath, except for his mother and, to some degree, Blaise Pascal just as his father only revered Stalin. Gradually his mental health deteriorates, leading to the murder with any number of candidates as the likely victim. It is grim but humorous at the same time and clearly Salvayre has no love for men, particularly French men.