Geneva, Famot.

Most certainly collective work, and work with a financial incentive for Françoise. The title refers to the time of Henry III, where the term “mignon” definitely took on the pejorative connotation that we still know it to have. A connotation that did not exist before, this word, minion , meaning “faithful”, “servant”. Thus, the Jesuits were for a time very seriously called the “ministry of Jesus Christ”.

It was the criticisms, both from the Huguenots and from the members of the League, of the escapades and excesses of the formidable swordsmen who surrounded the young king that gave it this derogatory meaning. And insofar as these critics considered them effeminate and suspected them of homosexuality (which, at the time, could land them on the stake if one was not high enough in the hierarchy), it would be interesting to see how Françoise tackled the question of “gallantry”. (Vincent)

Geneva, Famot.

Preceded by Les Bagages de sables by Anne Langfus. Note: Awaiting annotation.

Yverdon, Kesselring, 389 pages.

A book started following the death of Ulrike Meinhof in prison, On vous appelait terroristes offers a partial biography, fictionalized and polyphonic, of the protagonists of the German Red Army Faction. Each chapter focuses on the experience that each of them has (at the death of Katrina, Ulrike Meinhof) about the movement, its creation and the first attacks. It is the fatal spiral of counter-violence that Françoise d’Eaubonne describes. She shows how these young people, militants close to non-violence at the beginning of the novel, gradually come to the conviction that armed violence is the only effective recourse left to them to fight against State crimes.

On vous appelait terroristes em is a denunciatory title: the “urban guerrillas” are not, according to d’Eaubonne, “terrorists”, but militants of “counter-violence”. (Aurore)