Interview conducted by Alexandre Demidoff, journalist at Culture du Temps.
Born in 1975, Jean-Noël Orengo published his debut novel La Fleur du Capital (Grasset, 2015), a polyphonic portrayal of Pattaya, Thailand—a popular Southeast Asian tourist destination and global capital of prostitution. Orengo spent considerable time in Pattaya meeting the people who inspired his characters. The novel won the Prix Sade and the Prix de Flore.
In his fifth novel, Vous êtes l’amour malheureux du Führer (Grasset, 2024), Orengo tells the story of the almost romantic bond between Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer, the megalomaniac architect of the Third Reich. A survivor of the Nuremberg Trials, Speer saved himself and part of his reputation by inventing what we would now call autofiction. Acting as a kind of fact-checker, Orengo constructs a counter-fiction that exposes the inconsistencies in Speer’s self-representation. Like the pieces of a puzzle, the paragraphs of this mesmerizing novel come together to reveal the true face of the Nazi architect. The book offers a personal perspective of the author, presenting a critical reflection on history and narrative.
In French.
