French Literature Reviews - 2026

B. Lathuille, San-Antonio ou le temps majuscule
Novel and Narrative Prose

Bernard Lathuille, San-Antonio ou le temps majuscule

Paris: L'Harmattan, 2019.

204 p.

EAN 9782343184685

20,50 EUR

Publisher's overview:

San-Antonio ou le temps majuscule: a title that sounds like a wager, or even a challenge. Undoubtedly so, yet San-Antonio is much more than the literary showman he modestly claimed to be. For over forty years, time would prove to be the ultimate obsession of the novelist from Bourgoin-Jallieu, functioning both as an intellectual approach and a
psychological perception bordering on the pathological. Measured against the relentless standard of Cronus, themes such as old age, death, childhood, love, the fragility of the moment, and eternity emerge as deeply poetic subjects where his writing either flourishes lyrically or shatters dramatically, shifting from resigned acceptance to instinctive rebellion, and from a fascinated vertigo to poignant bitterness. Indeed, for more than four decades, time reveals itself as the true obsession of the novelist Frédéric Dard—a talented storyteller and verbal acrobat, an underestimated writer, viscerally tormented and desperately tender.

Born into a family of educators, Bernard Lathuille also joined the French National Education system, where he taught Italian language and civilization to high school and university students for many years.

Frédéric Dard published the vastly popular San-Antonio series under a pseudonym, alongside numerous psychological novels and dramatic works. The genre of popular detective fiction in France during the mid-twentieth century often relied on formulaic plots, yet writers like Dard frequently subverted these conventions through stylistic innovation and verbal play. Scholarship on popular literature has increasingly recognized how such works engage with serious existential themes, moving beyond mere entertainment to reflect broader cultural preoccupations with modernity and individual transience.

Readers interested in popular French literature and the stylistic analysis of detective fiction may find this study relevant. Bernard Lathuille examines how thematic concerns such as old age, childhood, and the passage of time manifest across four decades of writing. The discussion highlights the interplay between narrative techniques and the psychological perception of mortality, focusing on an influential figure in twentieth-century French storytelling.