Hygiène de l'assassin

I’ll admit: I paused this audiobook three times in the first hour to hiss, *“What an absolute bastard.”*—and that’s exactly why I couldn’t stop. Kessous’s narration is a clinic in how to voice a villain without caricature. Her Prétextat Tach doesn’t snarl; he *drips*—each syllable coated in the smug satisfaction of a man who’s spent decades weaponizing his intellect. When she shifts to the journalist’s lines, her tone tightens just enough to betray the young woman’s mounting horror, a contrast that makes their exchanges electric. The production is spare (no music, minimal post-processing), which suits the novel’s chamber-piece intensity, though I wished for slightly more dynamic range in the quieter moments—some of Tach’s whispery asides got lost in my car’s hum. Nothomb’s prose thrives on contradiction: Tach is both repulsive and hypnotic, his rants about art, misogyny, and mortality so grotesquely eloquent you’ll find yourself nodding before catching yourself. The pacing is relentless, with each of the five interviews escalating like acts in a play—though the third act’s philosophical detour risks losing listeners who crave plot over provocation. What lingers isn’t the “twist” (which feels inevitable) but the way Kessous delivers Tach’s final monologue, her voice cracking not with weakness but with the triumph of a man who’s turned his own decay into a last, defiant work of art. If you love antiheroes who refuse redemption and narration that *performs* rather than recites, this is your kind of poison