Pourquoi écrivez-vous ? La réponse de Roger Smith
Publié le 8 Mars 2016 à 17h09
Ecrivain sud-africain, Roger Smith a connu la sombre période de l'apartheid, politique contre laquelle il a farouchement lutté. Il a connu un succès international dès son premier roman, "Mélanges de sang".
Tout gamin déjà, j’adorais le polar, j’ai toujours voulu en écrire. Mais en Afrique du sud, pendant l’apartheid, ça semblait plutôt décalé d’écrire des romans policiers : on était environnés par des crimes bien plus graves, c’était de ça qu’il fallait parler. Un jour, en 2007, je me suis dit : « Bon, nous y voilà. Il est temps de voir si tu es capable de l’écrire, ce polar. » Je me suis assis et j’ai écrit Mélanges de sangs. Je n’en attendais pas grand-chose, et surtout je n’avais pas du tout conscience que j’étais en train de faire une chose qui allait transformer ma vie du tout au tout. Et pourtant me voilà, sept romans plus tard…
Since I was a kid I was crazy about crime fiction and always wanted to write it. But during the apartheid years in South Africa writing crime fiction seemed to be beside the point: there was a far greater crime to talk about. Then one day in 2007 I said to myself, “Okay, this is it. Time to see if you can write that crime novel.” So I sat down and wrote Mixed Blood (Mélanges de sangs). I had very few expectations and no sense at all that I was doing something that would completely transform my life, but here I am, seven crime novels later
La réponse originale en anglais
Since I was a kid I was crazy about crime fiction and always wanted to write it. But during the apartheid years in South Africa writing crime fiction seemed to be beside the point: there was a far greater crime to talk about. Then one day in 2007 I said to myself, “Okay, this is it. Time to see if you can write that crime novel.” So I sat down and wrote Mixed Blood (Mélanges de sangs). I had very few expectations and no sense at all that I was doing something that would completely transform my life, but here I am, seven crime novels later