Fanny Desarzens and Linda Bühler
Photo: Michel Bührer
Fanny Desarzens has lived in Lausanne for ten years but grew up in the countryside in the canton of Vaud. As a child, she spent most of her summer holidays in the mountains. Fanny completed her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at the Geneva University of Art and Design in 2018. After this experience in Geneva, she threw herself into literary work. Galel, her first book, won a Swiss Literature Prize and the Terra Nova Prize from the Schiller Foundation in 2023. Chesa Seraina, her second book, was awarded the Prix Ève by the Académie Romande. Her next novel, ‘Ce qu'il reste de tout ça’, will be published in August 2024. Fanny Desarzens is currently working on various texts and projects as well as her fourth novel.
Photo: Karine Yoachim-Pasquier
Linda Bühler was born in 1985 in the canton of Neuchâtel. After studying classical philology and working as a teacher for several years, she placed writing at the centre of her life. She then trained at the Swiss Literature Institute in Biel and graduated in June 2024. Linda Bühler draws inspiration from her current experiences of motherhood and daily life to uncompromisingly depict worlds that delve deep into family relationships. As a member of AJAR since 2022, she values co-creative writing. She has taken part in numerous readings and is currently working on her novel, in parallel with a project bringing together Swiss and Hong Kong authors. In her characteristic manner, as calm as it is clear, her writing analyses inheritance and lineage – that which was passed on from our ancestors.
Project
The story of three generations of women whose lives are interwoven. Simone experiences the Second World War in France. She is denied the love of her life and marries an older man to escape the burdens of family life. Now she is alone with her depressive, alcoholic husband and their five children. Dominique, one of her daughters, goes into exile in Switzerland and pursues her desire for motherhood, for which she sacrifices everything. Finally, there comes the child prodigy – and then twins, who turn her life upside down. As an adult, the eldest daughter asks herself: should she become a mother and take the risk of passing on the anger that seethes within her and in the hearts of the women before her?
The collaboration with Fanny Desarzens makes it possible to refine the structure of this story, to condense the narrative strands of the characters and to interweave the stories of these three women, giving each of them their own distinctive voice.
