Eighteen months later Stand upher previous novel tops sales in France in 2023 and 2024, the novelist signs a new novel expected on January 7 in bookstores.
Mélissa Da Costa, the most widely read French author, wants to surprise her readers again by bringing back to life an “old-fashioned” circus where wild animals stand up to humans “in sweat and blood”. Wild animalspublished on January 7 by Albin Michel, is one of the most anticipated novels of the beginning of the year. It appeared 18 months later Stand upthe previous novel by Mélissa Da Costa, which topped book sales in France in 2023 and 2024, ahead of Guillaume Musso.
The 35-year-old author assumes that she changes her style with each work. “ I really want to remain free in my writing, to never be dictated to what I have to write, to be able to do radically different things from one novel to another. “, she explains to AFP. “ I am not here to respond to a request, to a need. Otherwise I do marketing. At a given moment, I have an idea, an inspiration, I go for it. It works or it doesn’t, but the message I wanted to send is this », she adds. This time, “ the first idea » of the novelist was “ to write a novel about the cycle of violence in a dysfunctional family “. She ends up finding the universe in which to bring this story to life by reading a book to her young son telling the story of the life of a circus.
“A very harsh world”
« It clicked in my head. I had found the setting with the luminous dimension of the marquee and its sequins then, once the music stops, the return to a kind of darkness, to a very harsh, paternalistic world.», explains Mélissa Da Costa. This world, the hero, Tony, plunges headlong into it at the age of 17 after a violent altercation with his father. The teenager is hired by a traveling circus, Pulko, where he becomes the handyman for the patriarch Chano before embarking on training lions and a panther. “ Confronting these wild beasts is for him a way of confronting his own demons and proving to himself that he is a man. », summarizes the author. The story takes place in the 1980s, an era of “old-fashioned” traveling circuses, with “ sweat and blood “. Since then, the wild animals have disappeared and circus performers favor acrobatic and clown acts.
A million readers
The novelist arrived on the literary landscape with All the blue of the skya book that has exceeded one million copies sold since its first publication in 2019.
His books are also widely read in the Benelux and Italy, and are starting to make a name for themselves in Japan. This recognition “ provides me with great financial security which gives me the opportunity to take more risks », underlines Mélissa Da Costa, who lives in the countryside in Yvelines.
The novelist also says she attaches great importance to her new role as ambassador for Unicef, for which she published in 2023 The Star Makera long, unpublished short story. The 500,000 euros collected were invested in ecovillage programs in Madagascar.