Claudine Galea

Claudine Galeas" novel *Les choses comme elles sont* (Éd. Verticales, 2019) takes the childhood and adolescence of an unnamed protagonist in Marseille and its surroundings in the 1960s and 70s as a starting point for an exploration of childhood, family dynamics, and the impact of historical events on individual development. At its core, it is the story of "Petite,„ who develops from a curious child into a rebellious adolescent and finally into a young woman on the threshold of all possibilities. The novel depicts an existential family history of great harshness, marked by “black holes„ that are unspeakable but indelible. At the same time, one breathes in the linguistic density of the epochs experienced in Marseille and the bitter aftereffects of history from one shore of the Mediterranean to the other. Galeas“ fresco combines a lyrical writing style with the distance of an investigation into the dark zones of France's national narrative.