The Great Never (Au Grand Jamais)

A virtuoso, gripping novel about family secrets and the refuges we can offer to what is lost.

‘We grow up in a country, in a home, as much as in certain stories. But these stories are not all equal. There is one that prevails. It may be the most painful. It can be the most seductive. One thing is certain: it's not always the one that is closest to the truth.’

The narrator's mother has disappeared. This woman, an acclaimed poet in her own country, had already experienced erasure after moving to France: little by little, writing had left her. Her daughter, now a mother in her own right, saw her disappearance as a key to solving the ‘enigma that is a person’. Following her instinct - or rather a gift? - she collects the symptoms of a repressed history, until she unearths its beating heart.

Full of echoes and secret folds, Au Grand Jamais is a great novel about what is transmitted behind the silences and about the stories that help us live.

“With Au Grand Jamais, a baroque tale of infinite grace centered on the figure of her mother, Jakuta Alikavazovic confirms her now preeminent place in the literary landscape.”

— Livres Hebdo