In her new novel, published by Albin Michel, Claire Berest dissects the life of a man on the road to madness. Three days into the story, Étienne kills his wife, Vive, with 37 stab wounds. How did this couple get to this point? The first elements of an answer, in the form of an interview, before the author's visit to the Athenaeum on October 12th...

How did you come up with the idea for this novel: the period, your taste for news items, a particular story...?

A little bit of all of that, no doubt. I've been a fan of news stories since I was a child. But, above all, with time, I realize that certain themes are systematically found in my books. These are places of writing that I want to dig into again and again: the couple, their intimate space, in all their nooks and crannies, bright and dark, and the novelistic spring, the vertigo of the seesaw, the fact that, in a second, a life can capsize, for better or for worse. Femicide brings together both, in the most radical, definitive way possible. It was therefore obvious that I had to delve into this subject.

In your book, the notion of the couple is indeed forcefully questioned: each of us can recognize ourselves in Étienne or Vive...