Aurélien Bellanger turns the rebuilding of Notre-Dame into a novel of ideas
In « L'Architecte de Notre-Dame », the French novelist builds a story around two pairs of characters out of step with their times, reviewed by Le Monde as an ambitious staging of competing theories.
Aurélien Bellanger has published a new novel, « L'Architecte de Notre-Dame », reviewed in Le Monde on 11 October. According to the paper, the book is built around two duos of characters who sit awkwardly within their own eras, and it describes the result as an ambitious novel and a stimulating history of histories.
Le Monde's review characterizes the book as staging a grand spectacle of theories, suggesting a novel more interested in the clash of ideas than in straightforward narrative. The newspaper does not detail the plot further in the material available, and no publisher, length or release specifics beyond the review date are given.
Bellanger has built a reputation for fiction that weaves technology, history and institutions into dense intellectual narratives; this latest work, taking as its anchor the architect behind the restoration of Notre-Dame, continues that vein, per Le Monde's description, though the cathedral's reconstruction itself is not elaborated on in the source.
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