Jean-Philippe Toussaint closes his Brussels trilogy with a twilight thriller
In "La Hantise," the Belgian writer returns to the streets of his native city to finish a cycle begun with "La Clé USB" and "Les Emotions," according to Le Temps.
Jean-Philippe Toussaint has published "La Hantise," the third and final volume of what Le Temps calls his "cycle de Bruxelles," a trilogy set in the city where he grew up and still lives. The first two installments, "La Clé USB" (2019) and "Les Emotions" (2020), unfolded on the margins of the European institutions; Le Temps notes that readers need not have read either to follow this closing volume.
According to the paper, the new book is built like a thriller, though the plot itself is described as slight. What carries the novel, per Le Temps, is the telling: the critic praises Toussaint's command of a minimalist suspense, built as much on humor as on unease, in a narrative it describes as crépusculaire and inquiétant — twilit and unsettling.
The review also flags a whistleblower figure within the story, though no further plot detail is given in the source material.
Sources
This article was written from these reports.