A family lunch in Prague, on a frosty winter day under a bright sun.
On one side, a brother and sister, young adults, and their mother, who begged them to make the trip to her parents' house, far from Paris and their lives, to celebrate their uncle's appointment to the government. Their father, an artist from the Auvergne region, had died a few months earlier. His in-laws had always rejected him because he wasn't of their blue blood. On the other side, the aristocratic family: a self-important grandfather, a rigid and icy grandmother, an uncle drunk on power. The setting is unified by time: an afternoon; by place: the house, bustling with servants and the cries of a man locked in the basement; by action: a meal that will prove the adage true: revenge is a dish best served cold.
The lunch is recounted to us by two alternating voices. The sister's perspective, as she interprets her grandmother's cutting remarks, the cries of the man locked in the cellar (her mother's second brother, mentally ill and kept under chemical restraint), and the arrival of her uncle, who raped her years earlier. The brother's perspective, recalling the humiliations their father endured, and seeking revenge, beginning to steal objects from around him: a few dishes, a painting, a knife… The clock ticks, and reality gradually distorts: the sister sees young girls loitering around the house and overhears their stories (tales of burnings at the stake and the hunting of young girls); the brother's rage swells; gunshots follow the screams.
In this short and brutal text, written with a sharp, crystalline prose, Sara Bourre explores the silences within families and ratchets up the tension until the veneer of propriety shatters. Soon, the snow in the park will be stained with blood. A dazzling second novel, like a frosted sun.
"Sara Bourre's Les sangs bleus: an intimate, captivating, and deeply moving story of class struggle. Through chilling and rhythmic prose, with its alternating dual narration, Sara Bourre plunges us into the heart of a Czech upper-class family riddled with resentment, humiliation, and secrets. Behind the closed-off family dynamic, the writer stages an intimate class struggle, where social contempt is passed down from generation to generation and old wounds never heal. Driven by a narrative as original as it is effective, Les sangs bleus is a gripping and deeply moving novel." Kevin Boucaud-Victoire, Marianne
Shortlisted PRIX ALAIN SPIESS 2026
Shortlisted PRIX DU DEUXIEME ROMAN 2026 LECURE EN TÊTE
