The South African Deon Meyer is the sponsor of the Toulouse polars du Sud festival
The 14th edition of Toulouse Polars du sud, from October 7 to 9, welcomes around fifty novelists from all over the world, and honors the Spanish Rosa Montero and Deon Meyer, the king of South African thrillers.
Deon Meyer has just hit very hard with “The woman in the blue coat” and especially “The prey”, both published by Gallimard, “Serie Noire” collection (1). “The prey” marks the return of his favorite cops, Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido, who have a lot to do with this “rotten file” which leads them from Cape Town to Bordeaux, from Amsterdam to Paris with South African secret services, mafia Russian very pissed off and Chinese little brought to the kits… A treat of reading carried out at full speed and, in hollow, a portrait with vitriol of the society and the current South African politics.
You are the “Sponsor” of this 14th Toulouse Polars du Sud festival…
It is a huge honor, which I measure at its fair value. I am really very touched and excited by this invitation. I came to the festival five or six years ago, and I have wonderful memories of the event and of the city of Toulouse, which I love very much.
Authors will become from all over the world: is thriller, with its codes and markers, universal?
We could write it about literature in general, and I often go to festivals of traditional literature where there are also authors who come from everywhere, but I see what you mean and I agree with you on the fact that criminal literature to common structures, elements of dramatization, characters (the cop, the criminal, the serial killer…). All you have to do is read good Scandinavian thrillers, from Uganda or the United States: you will find here and there similar narrative characteristics, that’s obvious.
Yourself, would you be the same writer if you are American, Australian or British?
The settings of my books would be different, of course. In addition, the South African police are unique and our history irrigates many of my novels. My style would probably be the same, but it would be expressed on a material that would be completely different.
How do you write: do you have the whole story in mind or is it being written gradually?
I know where I’m going… basically! I have a general direction in which I’m moving, but I like it when the story speeds up, almost goes faster than me, and when my characters, Griessel and Cupido, drag me along with them.
These two have become like members of the family, over time…
The South African head of state you describe takes it for his rank and we read between the lines a bitter disillusionment, like a “post-Mandela blues”… It’s well seen. Yes, this head of state, in “The Prey”, was inspired by Jacob Zuma who, from 2009 to 2018, absolutely trampled and ruined everything Nelson Mandela had built. South African society is sick of corruption, the practice of which he has generalized, and of his calamitous management of the country…