2023-07-18 11:58:24
Look no further, the blaster of this pre-return, it’s him. With his novel, Les Meufs c’est des mecs bien, Mourad Winter connects valves, punchlines and provocations. But for what purpose exactly?
Uppercut of the year? Author, former stand-upeur and soon to be director, Mourad Winter, 36, has just released Les Meufs c’est des mecs bien. His writing is punctuated by punchlines, political references, rap and puns. Wourad, anti-hero who embodies the main character, shares with us the little voice that is in his head. She talks to us regarding religion, adultery and the limit between fantasy and sex, slightly crazy friends and also marriage… In short, everything that will punctuate our summers!
You released your first novel L’Amour, c’est surcoté at Robert Laffont editions in 2021. Your second, Les Meufs c’est des mecs bien, comes out at Clique editions, the house set up by Mouloud Achour. How was the connection made?
Mourad Winter: By mutual friends. I learned that Mouloud Achour was interested in what I was writing, but he was convinced that I had already signed elsewhere for the second. Which was not the case! So we talked regarding it for three months, the feeling went well, and it seemed logical to me to sign with him. He understands me, I’m a little younger than him, but we are in the same delirium, I feel close to his way of seeing things and acting, and I told myself that it was better to go to someone who understands my handwriting.
Les Meufs c’est des mecs bien evokes adultery, love and religion in a satirical way. What was the starting point for this novel?
It’s the story of a North African boy, Wourad, in his thirties, Parisian, who isn’t too religious, he just eats halal. It does the bare minimum, religiously speaking. He has been in a relationship for two years with a daughter, Adelaide. One day, she will tell him that she is converting to Islam and that she intends to wear the veil. There, it is a change of life, of paradigm.
How so ?
We realize the difficulty of being a veiled woman in France and also what that means for Wourad. Because there is always this fantasy of the Muslim man, from the Maghreb, who forces his wife to put on the veil. Me, in my daily life, all my friends who are in a relationship and who have a girlfriend who has put on the veil, they are the most disturbed by the act. I thought it would be a good idea to address this subject.
And this main character, Wourad, is Mourad?
Not all the time ! I have fun with the M and the W, because it’s a book with an omniscient point of view so there are reflections that come 100% from me and others that don’t. I thought maybe it was an anti-hero that I was going to highlight. He makes very serious remarks, but I think we all have a bit of a dark side in us and my character offers the possibility of discovering it.
RED AND BLACK_
Literary awards season approaching? Really the last of our author’s concerns.
You write in such a way as to shake up the French language, à la San Antonio but in a world mixed with hip-hop references.
I want it to be as true as possible. Let it be my little voice, but also that of everyone. That when I write, it’s contemporary and that we feel close to the character. We absolutely have to say to ourselves: “Mourad, that might have been my friend”. Whether he was a good person or not, he might have been your friend. The way I write has led some to see it as a suburban book. While it is generational. It was read from 15 to 70 years old. The editors of Laffont editions, who are 70-year-old ladies, sent me a letter to congratulate me. Curiosity makes it read.
They may have liked this San Antonio / Frédéric Dard side.
I was told regarding it. When I signed the first novel with Laffont, the director at the time, Sophie Charnavel, had precisely spoken to me regarding San Antonio, I did not know at all. Then I looked and understood the connection. I found it brilliant, because I realized that I hadn’t invented anything, it makes you humble. For example, Frédéric Dard has made a hundred books, so there are people who want to read jokes. Reading has always been that: the possibility of doing a lot with nothing at all.
In your novel, there are many punchlines. What are your references?
My daily influences are rap, music, football, these are themes that rocked my childhood and continue to speak to me. In writing there are influences via social networks, in the speed of transmitting information and giving an image at the same time, of being as concise as possible. This rhythm built my writing. But there are no specific references. What I like is my guideline: always be in the joke and I find that rap can be very funny and that it really binds to the writing.
Your favorite rap serials? .
Booba is very talented. It can also be texts that will make me laugh because of their violence, because of the madness of the character, but I have a lot of perspective on rap, I know that nothing is real.
“RAP HAS INSPIRED ME, AND STILL INSPIRES ME…”
By the way, do you receive royalties on the song “La Quête” by Orelsan, where he says “L’amour, c’est surcoté”?
Ha ha! I put it down to a combination of circumstances. I don’t think he read it. I have another friend who also spoke regarding it in a song, Tif. Rap inspired me, still inspires me, there’s a kind of loop, and it’s cool.
The literary re-entry of the publishing world starts in two months. What inspires you?
It’s not my goal to be in it, because I think people who look like me read a book a year and that’s during the summer. Because the rest of the year we have less time, we are taken up by social networks, platforms, cinema, children, life what! I know this book is going to be read this summer on the beach, so I’m taking it out first. I want to make those who do not read read.
The following ?
There is the adaptation of the first book Love is overrated in film (which he is currently directing with Malik Benthala and Laura Felpin in the leading roles, editor’s note). It is work; director, that’s something else! Going from being alone in your room to writing a story from scratch, with an airplane or a rocket to produce it, these are not the same budgets.
But you succeeded with Iconoclast.
Yes, it’s a good production company with whom we should also do Les Meufs c’est des mecs bien. And we are seeing to put on a play with Mouloud Achour. There is therefore a lot of news and you have to manage to juggle all the proposals… You have to remain vigilant!
Girls are good guys (Editions Clique, 336 pages, 20€)
Interview Anaïs Dubois & Laurence Rémila
Photos Axel VanHessche & Arnaud Juhérian
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#Mourad #Winter #novelistwinnower #read #read
