{"id":16511,"date":"2026-08-29T15:28:36","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T12:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/?p=16511"},"modified":"2026-08-29T15:28:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T12:28:36","slug":"the-social-circus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/the-social-circus\/","title":{"rendered":"The Social Circus"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to Causeur<\/em>, Esther Teillard<\/strong>‘s latest work, Fuck Circus<\/em>, published by Grasset, follows a woman freshly dumped by her boyfriend Gabriel on a sweltering summer evening reeking of decay. The relationship, which began three years earlier on a winter day in Paris’s Rue de Lisbonne, survived the cold but not the heat. The narrator wanders through an unnamed city that resembles Marseille and ends up in a strange multi-level bar called Le Mythe, where the night spirals into depravity.<\/p>\n

Teillard’s protagonist is painfully self-aware, tracing her emotional dysfunction to an absent father, a mother who never acted like one, and a lifelong deficit of love. Her confession is bleak: boys flee after using her for a few days or at most a few seasons, frightened off by what she describes as her unquenchable thirst for affection. Her romantic life, the magazine notes, resembles a Vietnam.<\/p>\n

Literature as Shield Against Nihilism<\/h2>\n

What keeps the narrator afloat amid the cold nihilism? Literature. She carries Baudelaire with her and harbors a deep admiration for Emmanuel Bove<\/strong>, discovered at age thirteen. Since reading Mes Amis<\/em>, she has compulsively hoarded books, piling them on the floor of her small apartment. When she carries a book in public, she regards strangers with benevolence, even forgiveness, sometimes love.<\/p>\n

Inside the bar, the night descends into psychedelic horror. A film producer who claims descent from Chateaubriand loses control and takes the assembled misfits hostage. Violence erupts. Yet Causeur<\/em> emphasizes that the tragedy is laced with biting irony, particularly in scenes skewering the lawyers and bankers of Parc Monceau. The characters in Fuck Circus<\/em> do not love themselves, but they are lucid.<\/p>\n

A Bold Voice in a Dreary Literary Season<\/h2>\n

Teillard previously published Carnes<\/em> in 2025 through \u00c9ditions Pauvert, which won the Prix Sade for best debut novel. Causeur<\/em> predicts that Fuck Circus<\/em> will stand out in an otherwise lackluster literary season thanks to its originality, stripped-down style, and absence of ornamental language. The prose cuts quickly to the bone.<\/p>\n

The novel has been compared to the work of American artist Grace Hartigan<\/strong>, particularly in its erasure of faces and vivid, multicolored chaos. Above all, it provokes laughter\u2014diabolical laughter\u2014which the magazine identifies as a crucial tool for mocking the powerful ringmasters of the social circus.<\/p>\n

Fuck Circus<\/em> by Esther Teillard is published by Grasset and runs 224 pages.<\/p>\n

With information from Causeur<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

French writer Esther Teillard’s new novel Fuck Circus follows a newly dumped woman through a chaotic, hallucinogenic night that descends into sex and violence while exploring modern neuroses and existential despair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":16510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[12545,12543,12547,55,12544,8036,12546],"nfg_topic":[135],"class_list":["post-16511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-contemporary-literature","tag-esther-teillard","tag-existentialism","tag-france","tag-grasset","tag-marseille","tag-social-commentary","nfg_topic-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16519,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16511\/revisions\/16519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16511"},{"taxonomy":"nfg_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/nfg_topic?post=16511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}