This first meeting will be devoted to Caesaria by Hanna Nordenhök, published in French by Éditions Cambourakis in a translation by Marina Heide. Published in Sweden in 2020, the novel was awarded the Sveriges Radio national radio novel prize. In France, it is part of the first selection for the 2026 Prix Médicis.
Caesaria is not a little girl quite like the others – at least, in the eyes of Doctor Eldh. For it was he who brought her into the world with a stroke of the blade, at a time when gynaecology was still in its infancy. A living proof of his medical feat, Caesaria must at all costs be protected, especially from prying eyes. She will therefore grow up far from the world, at Lilltuna, a farmstead surrounded by a forest. The shimmer of dew, the creaking of the floorboards, the smell of flowering shrubs or of dead animals mark out for her a closed universe, as marvellous as it is unsettling, where the course of time seems to have stopped.