'Control your emoticons. A family under the gaze of social media'

enfants

"Delphine de Vigan has never shied away from divisive topics. Her matter-of-fact, minimalist writing has relentlessly probed those recesses of family and social life that are often glossed over. Anorexia, social exclusion, incest, child abuse, alcoholism in school children, the loneliness and estrangement of the elderly: none of these have escaped her gaze.

She is also well attuned to the lures of literary celebrity: D’Après une histoire vraie (2015) is a baroque thriller about the destiny of a writer paralysed by overwhelming success, who falls prey to a reader obsessed with her private life and the veracity of her writing. Her latest book, Les Enfants sont rois, returns to the topic of celebrity, but is set in the world of YouTube influencers and parents who don’t hesitate to sacrifice their own children for the proverbial fifteen minutes of fame (...)"

 

Read the full article in the Times Literary Supplement