Olivia Rosenthal

Olivia Rosenthal is a writer, novelist and dramatist. She has published a dozen books including Toutes les femmes sont des aliens (Verticales, 2016) and Mécanismes de survie en milieu hostile (Verticales, 2014). She won the Prix du Livre Inter for Que font les rennes après Noël ? (Verticales, 2010) and the Prix Wepler-Fondation La Poste for On n’est pas là pour disparaître (Verticales, 2007). Her sound pieces and frescoes in public spaces explore ways that literature can take other forms than the written word.

Writing about the 1995 sarin attack in the Tokyo subway is a means of reflecting on the repercussions that terrorism has on our lives. The focus is less on the facts and more on the effects; the visible and invisible traces which an event of this magnitude can have on the minds of those who were not directly involved. At a time when we are exposed to this type of threat on a daily basis, choosing a subject that is distant in time and place from the core of our contemporary terrors is a means of finding, through fiction, other words with which to express their recurrences.