"C'est quand on sait que la vie sur terre n'est qu'une étape, tragique, nécessaire, magnifique, unique, que l'on est prêt à mourir pour un être qu'on aime au dessus de tout"
American Black Box
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Maurice G Dantec
One year later, in 1993, the French publishing house Gallimard released La Sirène Rouge (“The Red Siren”) which was adapted for the cinema in 2002. Half-way between a detective story and a serialized novel, it was very much noticed by the critics among which the French daily newspaper Libération that saw in it “one of the greatest detective novels of all times written by an already legendary author”. This first piece of work won him the Trophée 813 pour le Meilleur Roman Policier (“Trophy 813 for the Best Detective Novel”) and became a classic within ten years with over 200,000 copies sold: a soaring success story, indeed, and two years later, Maurice Dantec made a second novel, Les Racines du Mal (“The Roots of Evil”) blending the detective story genre and science-fiction. This cult novel made him the leader of what was going to be called the néo-polar movement (“the new-detective-novel movement”). The public was caught by surprise just like publishers, which did not keep him away from winning the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (“the Great Prize of Imagination”) as well as Le Prix Rosny l’Aîné (“the Rosny l’Aîné Prize”) in 1996. The novel is an ambitious crossover between the detective novel, science-fiction, thriller and essay genres; and here is Maurice Dantec’s signature: there is no genre anymore but the Maurice Dantec genre and a peculiarly hypnotic narrative. Dantec said that, apart from the contract he had signed with the publishing house Gallimard, “he had signed a contract with the Devil”. Literature had become a complete, viral art. Pounding such definitive statements, which he likes so much, he was noticed coming out of the detective novel niche. Dantec is an enigmatic character and had his second novel translated in fifteen different countries while taking sides on hot issues in a way that did not always fit in with the views of the restricted publishing circles. His statements went way far beyond what is expected to be said by a detective novel author, which brought him many enemies along with many faithful and even initiated readers.

 

The same year, he was chosen by Gallimard to be the very icon who would celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Série Noire collection by writing a novella – in the purest Cyberpunk style this time  – for the readers of the French daily newspaper Le Monde : Là Où Tombent les Anges (“Where the Angels Fall”).
In 1994 and 1995, he went to ex-Yugoslavia as a “witness” siding catholic Croats on his own initiative before the infernal domino of civil war led him to equally support Bosnia’s Muslims who were being slain by Milosevic’s communist troops. He then became weary of a politically indecisive and inactive France – just as much as of a Europe he thought was falling apart,  the Yugoslavian conflict being a clear example of that – having had a close-up on the real nature of violence in French suburbs. Moreover he decided to flee from the national literary environment and exiled himself to North America in 1998, more precisely to Montreal, Quebec.