Andreï Makine interview

Alternaissance, don’t forget this title, because although it is not very well known at the moment, it will be an important novel and will gradually become known. It is about what happens if we start to refuse to be complete idiots, if we’ve had enough of this great machine we are living in. People watch soccer, they work, they make kids, they eat... and then everything starts all over. It is society that has made people such idiots. This way of life suits everyone. And why? Because such people do not revolt. They don’t bother. They accept everything. Their salary is reduced – they accept it. Thus society produces its own slaves. In communism people were given a small flat with a bit of salary so that they won’t make problems, and the same thing happens in Western societies. Brains are filled with emptiness, while we feel that they are full, because there is a bit of soccer, a bit of salary, a bit of food in them. But that’s it and no more. The biological and social creature exists for perhaps a mere twenty thousand days, and then he dies. Just like a small fly. If a human being wants to revolt and says ’no, I am something else as well’, in that case they decide for alternaissance.