Grating on the Blackboard
Crissement sur le tableau noir

At Yourcenar secondary school, it’s the start of a new school year just like any other, the same faces, same problems, same anxieties… Of course, each teacher has his sights set on « educational goals reinvigorated by adapted teaching methods… » The literature teacher, Juan Vega, practices his own method irrespective of the compulsory curriculum which bores him… In the senior form, the one good at maths, serious, polite, apathetic, more a group of consumers than students, class participation is in short supply. One could even say Tatiana is the only one to contribute, to take literature to heart, and not only literature… A novel, according to its author, « full of ill humour and bad intentions ».

The author of Fred Hamster et Madame Lilas, winner of the 2004 RTL-Lire Prize, and of Les gadoues, Philippe Delepierre is a teacher of literature in a secondary school near Lille.