The same day as Marion Brunet is to receive the Alma Prize, Greta Thunberg and other activists on the ship to Gaza have been taken away by Israeli authorities.
I don't know her that well, but I was shocked by how she was treated like a spoiled child when she is a young woman who has the courage to talk about her future and the worries of her generation, says Marion Brunet.
The main characters in her young adult novels are often just young women with a strong physique and a survival instinct in a violent world. In August, the third part of the dystopian future trilogy "Ilos" will be released, which takes place in Brunet's hometown of Marseille. In 2052, the city is underwater due to climate change and is ruled by a mafia leader.
In the center stands Nolane, who grew up on the streets after her parents died in a tsunami. Already at the beginning, she is forced to kill to survive.
Debt permeates some of my books, but one can also see the action as a symbolic death, writing becomes a way to kill a toxic leader – although I don't say that one should kill. It's like a refusal to accept.
Beauty
The existence in her books is often "very dark", but not without beauty.
I have a form of clarity, I see the world as it is, I don't live in denial but there is always optimism.
After the Alma Prize of five million kronor, Marion Brunet "floats on clouds" – she no longer has economic stress and gets a new weight as a writer, she thinks.
As a trained social worker, she previously worked with children in psychiatry, or who had been taken into care, sometimes due to violent parents. Raised in the countryside in Vaucluse ("almost like Astrid Lindgren") she chose the same profession as her parents, before she eventually started writing full-time.
I was raised with humanistic values, very early on I wanted to stand by the loser, she says and tells that her first job eventually made her exhausted and frustrated.
"Sacred"
At the same time, she realized how she could influence people through her books. The most concrete example is perhaps with her debut novel, "Frangine" (Syrran) about a sibling pair with two mothers whose daughter is exposed to homophobia.
After that, I met several people who said to me that they thought homosexuals did not have the right to have children, but after reading my book they had changed their opinion. It was incredible, it was sacred.
Erika Josefsson/TT
Facts: Marion Brunet
TT
Born: 1976 in Vaucluse.
Lives: In Marseille.
Family: 14-year-old son.
Reading now: A biography of Astrid Lindgren. "She is a great woman."
In Swedish: "Grey Sea" – Marion Brunet's best-selling young adult novel about a disastrous sailing trip has just been released in Swedish translation. In the fall, the first part of the climate dystopia "Ilos" will also be released.
Her most complex novel: "Nos armes" (Våra vapen) (2024) which takes place over 20 years and deals with a young idealistic couple who participate in a robbery that goes wrong. One ends up in prison and the other waits outside, burdened with guilt.
About youth: "I have always had young people in all my books, even when I write for adults. It's an extraordinary age, there are so many choices, so many paths and so much intensity in the emotions. " In French, it is said 'a fleur de peu' – it is very beautiful – to be extra sensitive, on edge. To feel and react."
