THE
INSTIGATOR
Art & Culture magazine
NEWS
THE BOOK I READ
THE BOOK I LOVE
THE INSTIGATOR Literary Column by Nathalie Rykiel
ALCIDE PIERANTOZZI
L’INÉQUILIBRE
PARIS
Alcide Pierantozzi is an Italian author who has already published six books.
He made his debut with the novel Uno in diviso (One in Divided) (2006), published by Hacca, L'Uomo e il suo amore (Man and His Love) (2008) and Ivan il terribile (Ivan the Terrible) (2012) with Rizzoli, Tutte le strade portano a noi (All Roads Lead to Us) (2014), by Editori Laterza, and L'inconveniente di essere amati (The Inconvenience of Being Loved) (2020) by Bompiani.
He currently lives in the Abruzzo region in Italy.
Lo sbilico / L’Inéquilibre / The Imbalance is his first novel translated into French.
L’INÉQUILIBRE
THE IMBALANCE
The title intrigues me. I open the book, and the very first sentence sweeps me away immediately:
“At forty, I still sleep with my mother.”
The author decodes his mental illness from which he suffers — the most severe one — from the inside with utmost precision, along with the pain and the loneliness that accompany it despite the bewilderment and love of those close to him.
Curiously, it is clinical and immensely poetic. Lucidity, madness, and poetry brilliantly inhabit this astonishing, enlightening, and profoundly moving book. We plunge into the very heart of madness — into the abyss of psychological suffering and its delusions — we go down right alongside him. Truly inside — completely immersed.
It is a raw, painful novel, a testament. The torments of the soul — unbearable and fierce — are masterfully woven into the vastness and the beauty of literature.
____________Version Française
Alcide Pierantozzi est un auteur italien, qui a publié six livres. Il vit dans les Abruzzes (Italie). L’Inéquilibre est le premier de ses romans qui est traduit en français.
L’INÉQUILIBRE
Le titre m’intrigue. J’ouvre le livre et la première phrase m’emporte immédiatement :
« À quarante ans, je dors encore avec ma mère. »
C’est la maladie mentale dont il souffre, la plus grave, et ses douleurs, de la solitude qui l’accompagne aussi, malgré le désarroi et l’amour de ses proches, que l’auteur décrypte le plus précisément possible, de l’intérieur.
Curieusement, c’est clinique et immensément poétique. Lucidité, folie et poésie habitent brillamment ce livre étonnant, instructif et terriblement émouvant. Au plus près de la folie, de l’abîme de la souffrance psychique, de ses délires, on plonge. Avec lui. Dedans vraiment, immergé.
Roman-Témoignage cru et douloureux. Insoutenables et furieux, les maux de l’âme magistralement tricotés dans l’immensité et la beauté de la littérature.
« Qu’es-tu devenue, journée d’hier ?
Quelque part, il doit y avoir une télécommande. Peu importe si aujourd’hui une autre journée est arrivée, qu’est devenue celle d’hier? Mais aussi la douleur d’hier, où est elle allée se fourrer?
Et pourquoi est-ce qu’elle me manque, elle aussi ? » Alcide Pierantozzi
L’Inéquilibre by Alcide Pierantozzi
Éditions Gallimard Paris
Available in Italian and French
Translated from Italian by Lise Chapuis
Portrait of Nathalie Rykiel / Photo © Courtesy of Carole Laure
PHOTO / Lucie Rico at the 32nd Prix de Flore / Photo © Courtesy of Jean Picon for Say Who
32ND
PRIX DE FLORE
LUCIE RICO
BUT WHAT IS THIS BLOOD DOING ON JENNIFER'S SWEATER?
PARIS
BLOOD AT THE PRIX DE FLORE
Founded in 1994 by Carole Chrétiennot of Café de Flore, and French writer Frédéric Beigbeder, the Prix de Flore is awarded each year to a young author with promising, great talent.
The prize comes with a generous financial reward, and a glass of Pouilly-Fumé, all year round, served in an engraved glass with their name at the café, at the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
In 2026, the literary season continues to unfold with author Lucie Rico, who wins the 32nd Prix de Flore for "Mais que fait ce sang sur le pull de Jennifer?" / "But what is this blood doing on Jennifer's sweater?"
The book reveals Rico’s inventive writing style and features a young protagonist, Jennifer in her thirties, who has until now led a fairly satisfying, but boring life.
One day, the period key gets stuck on her computer, which stirs up a memory, a frozen fragment of the past. What happened on the day in her grandfather’s apartment with "Gone with the Wind"? Determined to find the truth, she delves into her memories to fill the gap left by this dangling phrase, but as her obsession grows, logic evaporates, and the truth becomes distorted.
“"Mais que fait ce sang sur le pull de Jennifer?"
"But what is this blood doing on Jennifer's sweater?" / Lucie Rico
Édition P.O.L
Paris (France)
PHOTO / "5 BIS" the book launch of Charlotte Gainsbourg / Photo © Courtesy of Galerie du Cloître
CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG
5 BIS
ARLES
5 BIS
Actress, singer, and director Charlotte Gainsbourg likes taking pictures.
Since starting at a very young age, she has built a career spanning cinema, music, and personal projects, both in France and internationally. Alongside her films, she pursued a musical path where songwriting, vocals, and performance offer a different way to explore emotion and lived experience.
Some thirty years after her father’s passing, using a Hasselblad, Charlotte Gainsbourg stepped into memory and captured the interior of her parents’ home at 5 bis rue de Verneuil in Paris. Photography thus becomes an act of encounter, to draw her closer to her father’s memory
In 2021, with Jane by Charlotte, she dedicated the film to her mother, Jane Birkin. She shifted her work further towards the act of observing, portraiture, and bringing subjects into presence, and developed a personal body of work driven by an uncompromising commitment to authenticity and a profound connection to the intimate.
In Arles, during Les Rencontres d’Arles, she presented her book and exhibition 5 BIS, at La Galerie du Cloître of images she made of her childhood home, before the exhibition ravellies to the Saint Laurent Babylone store-gallery on 24 September.
“5 BIS” by Charlotte Gainsbourg
La Galerie du Cloître
Les Rencontres d’Arles
Arles (France)
6 juillet au 4 octobre 2026
Saint Laurent Babylone
24 September 2026
PHOTO / Book signing of "Fast + Louche" by Derek Blasberg with Valéry Dardenne, Editorial Director of THE INSTIGATOR (left), Derek Blasberg (middle), Zoltan Alexander, Editor-in-chief of THE INSTIGATOR (right) / Photo © Courtesy of SAY WHO
DEREK BLASBERG
FAST + LOUCHE
LIBRAIRIE 7L
PARIS
FAST + LOUCHE
Fashion nightlife provocateur Derek Blasberg is a New York-based writer and editor of the US edition of Vanity Fair. With his current book, he revisits his cult column Fast + Louche between 2009 and 2012, initially published in Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine.
Social and personal archives of wild nights, the chaos, the glamour, and an era that predates social media and the world of selfies.
The book signing took place tonight at the Librairie 7L - Karl Lagerfeld’s former studio-library - for a special book signing event, which compiles three years of endless parties and nights out of every kind.
The book is part of a new wave of beautiful volumes (featuring illustrator Stéphane Manel, artist Helga Stentzel, and others) by Sarah Andelman’s imprint Just An Idea, this is the intimate story of a fashion globe-trotter.
The idea for the book dates back to 2009, when his friend Christopher Bollen - then Deputy Editor of Interview magazine - asked if he wanted to write a column for the publication. This was well before the advent of the iPhone generation, when New York nightlife was still mythical.
“Nightlife was not better at the time, just different, and I don’t think we should idealise the past. I do think we measured the success of a night differently; we measured it by the crazy fun we had, the conversations, the all-night dancing until sunrise, broken heels, and missed flights” Derek Blasberg
This book celebrates that brief moment when we once lived first, before publishing stories on social media to prove that we were there.
“Fast + Louche” / Derek Blasberg
Librairie 7L
Paris (France)
PHOTO / Summer read at the Méditerranée / Photo © Courtesy of Malin Oredsson
ÉDITIONS STOCK
MA NUIT AU MUSÉE
PARIS
MY NIGHT IN THE MUSEUM
France’s oldest publishing house, Éditions Stock, has built a prestigious and diverse catalogue encompassing both French and international literature, and has published seven collections, one of which is Ma Nuit au musée (My Night in the Museum). The collection was launched in 2018 and has since published nearly 30 volumes.
Sylvain Marcoux chose five books to review.
On a hot, luminous summer afternoon, time is suspended in long days. Stolen hours. Those are the moments when you let yourself be swept away by a book, being devoured, dreamy, and philosophised.
“Beauty is language, memory is material, emotion is a signature. I had a dream, and imagined myself spending a night in a museum, finding myself alone before the artworks, listening to the silence, observing, feeling, and drawing upon beauty to live a unique experience.” Sylvain Marcoux
This is precisely the distinctive experience of the series Ma nuit au musée by Éditions Stock.
Conceived and edited by Alina Gurdiel, the collection is built around a singular experience: inviting different authors to embark on an intimate, timeless moment by spending an entire evening and night alone in the museum of their choice. From these nocturnal interludes emerge unique and unexpected narratives, where evocative artworks become the starting point for multifaceted explorations. Blending poetry, philosophical reflection, aesthetic appreciation, and sociological analysis, each book opens up a fresh dialogue between literature, heritage, and creativity.
Bleu Bacon
by Yannick Haenel
Haenel explores a fascinating encounter with the incandescent work of Francis Bacon at the Centre Pompidou (Paris).
L’Imparfait
by Éric Reinhardt
Reinhardt imagines sleeping beside a Hermaphrodite at Galleria Borghese (Rome).
Après Dieu
by Richard Malka
Malka engages in a philosophical dialogue with Voltaire at the Panthéon (Paris).
La Nuit sur commande
by Christine Angot
Angot revisits her childhood in Châteauroux at the Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection (Paris).
Le Buveur de brume
by Guillaume Gallienne
Gallienne explores his Georgian identity as he comes face to face with his great-grandmother’s portrait at the Musée National de Tbilisi (Tbilisi, Georgia).
These accounts are a source of pure emotion, the true magic of this collection, transforming artworks into conversations, turning spaces into realms of the imagination, and turning a museum visit into a profound inner experience.
Read without moderation.
“Ma Nuit au musée“
Collection by Édition Stock
Paris (France)
"Bleu Bacon“ by Yannick Haenel
“L’Imparfait” by Éric Reinhardt
“Après Dieu“ by Richard Malka
“La Nuit sur Commande“ by Christine Angot
“Le Buveur de Brume” by Guillaume Gallienne
PHOTO / Arthur Teboul / Photo © Courtesy of Arthur Teboul
POEME
MINUTE
ARTHUR TEBOUL
THE ORACLE'S OFFICE
FOR PATIENTS
PARIS
ARTHUR TEBOUL
Poetry. It seems it works better in France than anywhere else in the world.
Hidden in the heart of the 3rd Arrondissement in Paris, at 127 rue de Turenne, there is a discrete brass plate on the wall for a consultation office for patients who come for a “treatment” of a few minutes of poetry.
We made an appointment for this mysterious consultation with Arthur Teboul, the talented front man of the group Feu! Chatterton, and artist-poet above all, who invented the concept of Poem-Minute, a short, text-inspired consultation for impatient patients.
The cabinet office, decorated by the talented Mégane Servadio, has a rare elegance, The dark blue walls take root in a thick carpet with copper moons. The oracle's office is in the shape of a bridge or a banded curve, the poet's word is an arrow fired by the invisible into the light.
On the left wall an original drawing by Henri Matisse from the 40s, two sensual women dance there the unconscious premiers of La Ronde, its rare yellow radiates our expectation. This inspired Huis-Clos concludes with the moving reading of the newborn's sparkly text. I think of René Char, "The words that will arise know about us things we don't know about them".
“I know poetry is essential, but i don't know what for.”
“Je sais que la poésie est indispensable, mais je ne sais pas à quoi.” Jean Cocteau
"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. Albert Camus
PHOTO / "Yes" by William Klein / Photo © Courtesy of Thames & Hudson
WILLIAM
KLEIN
YES
THAMES & HUDSON
LONDON
YES
A book YES by William Klein was recently published by Thames & Hudson, London.
With over 250 images, this career retrospective explores the late William Klein’s entire creative and artistic arc. Directed by Klein himself, from the selection of content to book design, this large-format publication looks back at his uncompromisingly creative lifetime, showcasing Klein’s prolific and relentlessly innovative contribution to the world of photography, art, design, and filmmaking.
PHOTO / "One Hundred Summers" by Vanessa Branson / Photo © Courtesy of Vanessa Branson
VANESSA BRANSON
ONE HUNDRED SUMMERS
A FAMILY STORY
LONDON
ONE HUNDRED SUMMERS
“I could so easily have written a jolly romp of a book without putting the real bits in it,” says Vanessa Branson.
The book One Hundred Summers is a rollercoaster revelation that Richard Branson’s sister, Vanessa Branson has chosen to include about her life in this family memoir.
For THE INSTIGATOR she filmed herself walking in her garden in the countryside, talking about her book and family stories.
JUST PUBLISHED
just
published
BOOKS+LITERATURE REVIEWS
