French Literature Reviews - 2026

Sophie Képès, Désappartenir: Psychologie de la création littéraire
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

How do the striking experiences of an unusual childhood not only ignite a literary vocation, but also shape the form it will ultimately take? Straddling literary investigation and autobiography, Sophie Képès tracks down the hidden roots of writing in Kafka, Pierre Michon, Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, Joyce Carol Oates, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Danilo Kiš, and Dostoevsky by delving into the secrets of their early lives.

Along the way, she unveils her own trajectory—marked by a mother suffering from Munchausen syndrome—and reveals how writing, and literature more broadly, can become a sanctuary for each of us. This book stems from the observation that most literary critics have paid very little attention to the traumatic events of writers' childhoods. Yet, when examining the paths of several key authors who seem to have nothing in common, compelling patterns emerge, revealing undeniable links between childhood suffering and the literary creation process.

Cover illustration: Hermit in a Landscape, Sainte-Croix Museum, Poitiers

Sophie Képès writes under her own name and the pseudonym Nila Kazar. A recipient of several national and international residencies, she publishes novels, short stories, non-fiction documents, articles, and translations from Hungarian, and collaborates on fiction films and documentaries. She teaches creative writing and screenwriting at the university level.

Excerpt:

“As a little girl, you wanted to discover everything on your own, through trial and error. Even to acquire practical skills, it was vital that you invent your own method. Otherwise, you would find yourself inhibited and clumsy. Adults' instructions made you impatient, seeming completely inadequate; following them guaranteed failure. In hindsight, you realize this resembles the experimental way a fiction book is written. Indeed—and it is crucial to understand this if one presumes to write—writers draw on their ignorance rather than their knowledge. You set sail without a map on a journey that leads to the discovery of America, even though you initially set out for the West Indies. This also characterizes the approach of scientific research: a succession of trials, errors, and new attempts.”

“Yet at school, you were always at the top of your class without much effort. Sometimes a gifted child, when confronted with a family taboo, becomes a poor student overnight. Forbidden from knowing certain fundamental facts, they express through this sudden disinterest a deep distrust of all forms of knowledge, which are unconsciously perceived as traps. Knowledge in itself becomes dangerous because it carries the potential of rejection by the clan. That wasn't the case for you. You remained a good student because you had too much to lose otherwise—school was the only place where you were recognized and valued. But outside of it, you trusted only your own capacity to progress, your empirical trials, and your inner resources. ‘All by myself!’ was your motto for learning.”

“The decision Chekhov made in 1890, at the age of 30, to investigate the Sakhalin penal colony remains a mystery even to him. No writing commission or professional assignment justified it, even though he claimed he wanted to ‘pay his debt to medicine.’ Why this break in a literary career already crowned with the Pushkin Prize? And why put himself in voluntary danger when he was suffering from tuberculosis, the ten-week journey was grueling, and that island off Siberia had an atrocious climate? He alluded to a vague sense of responsibility and guilt toward the convicts. He spoke of an indispensable ‘pilgrimage.’ Yet to you, it seems obvious that he identified with the convicts. Indeed, his childhood was that of a young prisoner: exploited, abused, and beaten by his father—a bigoted grocer and domestic tyrant. A veritable ‘penal colony.’”

The little boy would get up at five in the morning to help out in his father's shop, go to school where he was the target of humiliation, and then return to the shop (where he literally froze) to wait on customers late into the evening. He was forced to kiss his father's hand after being punished. Moreover, his father compelled him to sing in church, even when he was exhausted from chores and beatings. The young chorister felt “as though in a penal colony,” in his own words.

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Patryck Froissart provides an in-depth analysis of Désappartenir in La Cause littéraire on February 5, 2024.

“While establishing cause-and-effect relationships between her childhood, certain adult actions, and her books, while simultaneously pushing forward in her inner quest in particular and her investigation into artistic creation in general, the author observes—with some astonishment—that psychobiographers do not attribute to the relationship between an artist's work and childhood all the importance it deserves. In her view, this relationship sheds essential light on the genesis and elementary structure of an artistic work, both while under construction and in its completed form.

Thus, she undertakes this connection herself. She engages in—and invites us into—a meticulous narrative reconstruction of the childhood years of dozens of the greatest creators within their social, familial, and genealogical frameworks. She compares the lived experiences, relatives, and origins of one and another, integrates her own, highlights undeniable coincidences, and arrives at a general ‘diagnosis’ of the psychological conditions most favorable to the birth and flourishing of artistic genius, particularly in literature.

By apparent paradox, in order to un-belong [désappartenir], one must first truly know what and whom one belongs to... Sophie Képès thus embarks, in the course of her writing, on a fascinating quest for her paternal and maternal origins.

Writing as a bastion, a retreat against malice, a shell against injustice; writing as a refuge, an escape toward a better elsewhere; writing as isolation and desired solitude; writing as revenge and revolt against an environment that breeds suffering; writing to live, to survive the aftermath of the past; writing to ‘take back control’ of one's own existence; writing as an attempt to answer personal existential questions; militant writing, revealing writing, confessing writing, therapeutic writing, cathartic writing, unveiling writing, exhibitionist writing, premonitory writing, sexual writing; yet in the same texture, inextricably, relentlessly, writing as a heritage—all these scriptural expressions ultimately stem from difficult childhoods marked by deprivation, suffering, the absence of a father, mother, or both parents, abandonment, rejection, repeated bereavements, illness, contempt, mockery, abuse, incest, and so forth, from which it is vital to distance oneself.” Read the full article: La Cause littéraire http://www.lacauselitteraire.fr/desappartenir-psychologie-de-la-creation-litteraire-sophie-kepes-par-patryck-froissart?

In the online magazine Lettres Capitales on December 5, 2023, Andreea Răsuceanu and Dan Burcea interviewed the author of Désappartenir.

Sophie Képès states notably: “As a reader, I never liked ‘needless books,’ as Jean Paulhan used to say. By this expression, I do not mean mainstream literature, such as the detective novel genre, which I have practiced myself under a pseudonym. Such books serve a very respectable function. But as for literature, it seems to me that the only works worthy of entering this category must be conceived under the impulse of an imperious drive, whose roots are mostly unconscious. The definition I give of it in my essay is very simple: ‘The feeling that certain things demand to be said is perhaps the only universalizable driving force behind writing.’ And only these ‘things’ deserve the enormous investment required to produce a book, that insane labor so brilliantly embodied by an author like Pierre Michon.

It seems to me that autobiography plays a decisive role in triggering a literary vocation, but that only hard work, maturation, vision, and—it must be mentioned!—talent give intensity and depth, meaning and beauty to literature. I am very reluctant regarding the autofiction genre, which often strikes me as self-indulgent and artificial. Yet to my mind, it is clear that any literary fiction feeds on autobiography and that there can be no total break between life and work. The latter is the fruit of an alchemical transformation, of the slow and difficult metabolization of many heterogeneous materials: memories, observations, desires, dreams, reflections, perceptions, affects, not to mention the decisive contribution of reading... Read more: Lettres Capitales

In the magazine Lire on November 23, 2023, Sophie Péters dedicates an article to Désappartenir under the title: “In Search of the Literary Self”

Finally, a book that gives pride of place to the subtlety of human psychology through literary creation! Sophie Képès takes a close look at what links the vocation of writing to the childhood experienced by ‘great’ writers. ‘Without seeking to explain a work solely through biography, it seems strange to find no continuity between these two states of an individual's personality, as though—writer or not—early experiences in no way determined the rest of their life!’ It is to this barely sketched childhood that she restores its rightful place in Désappartenir, straddling literary investigation and autobiography. It is also to this hidden spring that Sophie Képès draws her narrative. She unveils a part of her childhood, which we enter with awe and empathy, testifying: ‘Imagining yourself becoming a writer, you didn't dream of glory or fortune: you dreamed of being read and understood [...]. In those disembodied beings known as readers, you sought the love and understanding you lacked at home.’ By plunging us into literary creation, the author also invites us into a process of healing. What if we, as readers, could find in these wounded children something to mend the broken pieces of our own existence?

Under the title “At the Hidden Sources of Writing,” Francis Vladimir dedicates an article to Sophie Képès's essay in the online literary review Le Passe Muraille:

“There is a touch of mastery in this book, a touch of self-evidence, a touch of ‘yes, exactly that,’ of secret mechanisms brought to light and illuminated for our understanding, a touch of a profoundly benevolent yet uncompromising approach that makes this essay—with its manifest psychological density—an impressive and delightfully rewarding literary object to read.” Read the article: Le Passe Muraille.

The exploration of how early life experiences influence artistic expression has long engaged writers, psychoanalysts, and literary critics alike. By examining the formative years of major authors, investigations of this nature often bridge autobiography and critical analysis, probing the psychological mechanisms that drive creative work. Writers have frequently turned to narrative art as a means of engaging with personal history, transforming early adversity into a structured literary vocation. Readers interested in the intersections of biography, psychology, and creative output may find this work a relevant contribution to these ongoing discussions.

Sophie Képès investigates the links between childhood suffering and the literary creation process in Kafka, Pierre Michon, Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, Joyce Carol Oates, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Danilo Kiš, and Dostoevsky. Grounded in the observation that critics have often overlooked the traumatic events of writers' early lives, the volume combines literary investigation with autobiography. The author tracks down the hidden roots of writing while unveiling her own trajectory, suggesting how literature can function as a sanctuary.