The Son Of Man: Jean-Baptiste Del Amo on Masculinity, Inherited Violence & Patriarchy
2/3/202638 min
This month, Dua sits down with acclaimed French novelist Jean-Baptiste Del Amo to discuss his haunting novel The Son Of Man – a tense, unsettling exploration of masculinity, patriarchy, and the cycles of violence passed from father to son. Set largely in an isolated mountain house in rural France, the novel follows a family upended by the sudden return of a father whose past trauma slowly reveals itself in devastating ways.
“This is a dark book, even by my standards,” Dua says. “And yet, there’s also real beauty here.”
During the interview, Jean-Baptiste tells Dua why he wanted Th...
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Dua Lipa· Host0:44
[instrumental music] Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Service 95 Book Club. Today, we have a very special guest for you, one of France's most exciting contemporary authors, Jean-Baptiste Del Amo. We'll be talking about his astonishing novel, The Son of Man. After a long and unexplained absence, a father returns to persuade his wife and young child to move to a rundown house in the mountains. It's unbelievably tense from beginning to end, and it had me asking questions about the legacy of trauma, the nature of violence, and whether we can break the chains. I'm looking forward to getting into all of that with Jean-Baptiste and with you. There's this one excerpt in the book that I thought was really powerful about inherited trauma. "Some men are better left buried because actually they're simply waiting for someone to come and dredge them from their deep torpor so that