À la ligne
Feuillets d'usine
Grand Prix RTL/Lire 2019
Prix Régine Deforges 2019
Prix Jean Amila-Meckert 2019
Prix du premier roman des lecteurs de la Ville de Paris 2019
Prix Eugène Dabit du roman populiste
Par la magie d’une écriture tour à tour distanciée, coléreuse, drôle, fraternelle, la vie ouvrière devient une odyssée où Ulysse combat des carcasses de bœufs et des tonnes de bulots comme autant de cyclopes.
- Vermillon
- Paru le 03/01/2019
- Genre : Littérature française
- 272 pages - 140 x 205 mm
- EAN : 9782710389668
- ISBN : 9782710389668
Foreign Rights
On the line. Notes from a Factory
Rights sold
Australia (Black Inc Books)
Germany (Matthes & Seitz)
Greece (Potamos)
Italy (Bompiani)
Korea (Bookhouse)
Netherlands (De Arbeiderspers)
Norway (Aschehoug)
Serbia (LOM)
Spain (Siruela)
Sweden (Weyler)
UK (Head of Zeus)
Awards
Grand Prix RTL/Lire 2019
Prix Régine Deforges 2019
Prix Jean Amila-Meckert 2019
Prix du premier roman des lecteurs des bibliothèques de la Ville de Paris
Prix Eugène Dabit du roman populiste
Presentation
À la ligne is the story of a young man who finds himself employed as a casual worker in the fish canneries and slaughterhouses of Brittany.
In a style both simple and lyrical, at times angry and yet funny and affectionate, Joseph Ponthus turns his working life into an Odyssey — only his Ulysses is fighting tons of cyclopean whelks, or beef carcasses heading to the rendering plant.
Day after day, the author keeps track of his work on the production line, making note of the noise and smells of the factory, the exchanges with his colleagues, the repetition and absurdity of his work. But what helps him through each day, are the poets and writers he summons to his side. Those who illuminated his childhood, his adolescence and his adult life. Thanks to Dumas he becomes a musketeer all over again, with Apollinaire he is Lou’s lover, he goes to battle with Marx, while recalling the nostalgic and joyful songs of Trenet. As work and memories constantly intertwine, we get to know the woman he loves, Pok Pok the dog, the bliss of Sundays, the smell of the sea. This is his provisional victory against everything that hurts, that alienates, that could stand in the way of his paradoxical happiness of being in the world while surrounded by the horrors of industrialisation.
À la ligne is part of a tradition of proletarian literature, from Henry Poulaille to Robert Linhardt, via Georges Navel : a tradition to which Joseph Ponthus adds a poetic dimension that, as Rimbaud would have it, opens up the hope of changing our lives.
Joseph Ponthus was born in 1978. After studying literature in Reims and social work in Nancy, he worked for more than ten years in special education in the Paris suburbs where he directed and published Nous... La Cité (Éditions Zones, 2012). He now lives and works in Brittany. À la ligne is his first novel.
If you are interested in publishing one of our books or wish to receive further information, you can contact:
Anna Vateva, Foreign Rights : + 33 1 40 46 71 02
a.vateva@editionslatableronde.fr
