Sergueï Shikalov - Grenouille - Silencio Book Club

At the start of the war in Ukraine, a Russian movie star flees. She goes into exile in Paris, convinced that the situation will improve, that everything will eventually return to normal. But nothing improves. Nothing returns to normal. Something has broken. Thus begins a brutal descent into anonymity and indifference. Wandering through Paris, she smokes, mentally conjugates French verbs, marvels, drinks champagne, and then suddenly stops. What if this erasure were an opportunity? Looking at oneself differently, questioning oneself, taking a stand to regain one's dignity. Sergei Shikalov was born in Russia into a Russian-Belarusian family and moved to France in 2016. His first novel, Espèces dangereuses, published in 2024 and a finalist for the Goncourt du Premier Roman, won the André-Malraux Prize in the "Engaged Fiction" category and the Gay Novel Prize.