2049. France was transformed after the “new revolution” which took place 20 years earlier. From now on, we can live “safely” under the eye of our neighbors in so-called transparent neighborhoods, where houses are built like vivariums with rooms separated by simple glass partitions.
In these places, crime has completely disappeared. Or almost, since what seemed impossible nevertheless happens: a family disappears from one of the most prominent neighborhoods. A police officer nostalgic for the old ways of doing things must then investigate her disappearance, when she was no longer relegated in this new system to the role of “protective guard”.
Panorama, says the thirty-year-old writer (also a journalist in France), was born from an image, in fact. One evening, a lit furniture store gives him the impression of entering the privacy of a home.
But her novel, she adds, is also very linked to the general climate in which we live. To his thoughts on social networks, a sort of virtual window into our private lives. To this concept of transparency which “crosses” our time, to which everyone seeks to adhere – in politics, in marketing or in the private sphere, she illustrates. Like these companies that pride themselves on being transparent by showing how they produce; or those restaurants that open their kitchen so that it is visible to customers.
“This transparency that I made material, with its glass walls, already exists. So I didn’t feel like I was making a real dystopia. I felt like I was pulling the threads of reality and what’s happening today. But barely,” says the author.
This living together which is imagined in Panorama, on the other hand, is far from ideal, we quickly discover throughout the intrigue which is built around the investigation into the disappearance of the family.
And as “we always want to see what is similar to us,” she emphasizes, we find in these new neighborhoods the same social divisions as before. Those who cannot afford to live in transparent neighborhoods – or do not want to – live on the fringes of cities, in places where the absence of citizen surveillance goes hand in hand with lower security.
“This is the big question of the book,” believes Lilia Hassaine. Should we sacrifice our freedom for more security? »
The writer pushes this reflection on freedom even further. Social networks, according to her, send us images that always go “in the direction of what we already think”. “They feed the same thoughts all the time, the same ideas, by rotating people around people who are from roughly the same social backgrounds, by suggesting the same ways of dressing, the same ways of decorating their house , etc. », Says Lilia Hassaine.
So we have the impression of being free, in his opinion, when in reality we are constantly influenced – encouraged by the social valorization that gaining Instagram followers can bring, for example.
“This society of transparency,” underlines the writer, “is in fact a society of appearances. We spend our time comparing ourselves, talking about tolerance, when in reality, we have difficulty supporting difference. »
“Ultimately, we are always struggling with the “likes, I hates”, fear, anger. It becomes very strong, very clear-cut emotions, as if there were no longer a whole range of emotions. And that’s something that worries me. The principle of literature, precisely, is to work on all the emotions, to see with what nuance we can speak of a feeling,” she concludes.
