Ysis – författare

After the war, nothing truly returns to its place.At the House in the Meadows, near Saint-Mihiel, Gertrude and Juta have survived fire, exile, and winter. In the farm that sheltered them, they have learned to live together, to depend on one another, and then to stop hiding what binds them. Around them, however, the world grows peaceful only on the surface. Lorraine remains occupied, the roads still carry the weariness of battle, and peace is being rebuilt under the gaze of the victors.Little by little, their refuge opens. Women come to read, to ask for help, to seek care, advice, a place where they may set down what the war has damaged. Between the Saint-Mihiel fair, visits, poorly healed wounds and unexpected encounters, Gertrude and Juta discover that survival is no longer enough: they must now choose how to live in a country that is no longer entirely their own.In this wounded Lorraine, the simplest gestures take on new weight. To welcome, to care, to protect, to desire, to remain faithful: every decision commits more than one heart. What began as a closed refuge becomes the first circle of a wider world, where other women, in turn, are trying to stand upright.1871 — Saint-Mihiel continues The House in the Meadows and opens the Lorraine cycle onto an occupied, anxious, still-living province. A postwar novel of intimate reconstruction and female bonds, where History is not played out only in treaties, but in houses, bodies, and daily choices.Translated from French by Ysis

Rome is celebrating Caesar. Wine flows, wreaths dry in the heat, and beasts are led towards the altars. In the streets, the triumph smothers doubt beneath cries, dust, laurel and the blood of sacrifice. And yet, beneath the splendour, the city has already begun to change its face.Cornelia finds Lucretia again after years of silence. In a house kept apart from the crowd, among shadow, coolness and chosen solitude, an old bond takes shape once more. What seemed to belong to the past returns differently: graver, freer, more necessary.But Rome is coming undone. The streets grow less safe, protections fall away, loyalties shift. Around the two women, other presences appear, other bodies, other allegiances. What was at first only an intimate refuge gradually becomes a living circle, fragile, crossed by desire as much as by threat.44 BC — The Goddesses of Rome is a sensual and political sapphic historical novel, where the fall of an old order is not played out only in the Senate, in triumphs or in conspiracies, but in houses, gestures, bodies, and the choices of women History too rarely sees.

War breaks out. Men leave, roads empty, then fill again with rumours, soldiers, wounded men and refugees.In Lorraine, Gertrude von Homburg sees her estate destroyed by fire. Noble, widowed, accustomed to the usages of a world now collapsing, she is forced to flee without escort, without certainty, almost without luggage. At her side is Juta, a Swiss cook with rough speech, sure hands, and the prudence of a woman who has never had the luxury of illusion.Everything sets them apart: birth, education, body, language, the way each woman holds herself, resists, endures the cold. Yet in an isolated farm, far from salons and battlefields alike, they have no choice but to learn how to live together.There is wood to find, food to spare, mud, frost, contradictory news. Above all, there is the other woman, seeing what was not meant to be shown: fatigue, pride, fear, solitude. In this comfortless house, social distances shift little by little. What was meant to be only a refuge becomes a closed world of daily gestures, tensions, dependence, and unexpected attentions.1870 — The House in the Meadows tells of war from its margins: not through uniforms and great decisions, but through two women forced to survive while the world of men tears itself apart in the distance. A story of exile, cold, wounded dignity — and the beginning of what may become love, almost in spite of themselves, when everything else has burned.Translated from French by Ysis.

In the wake of Montjoie, Apolline and Élise have resumed their life in Saint-Mandé, under the reassuring forms of propriety. Officially, Élise still occupies a room at the end of the corridor. In truth, that room remains almost useless, maintained for the sake of appearances, while their intimacy has settled elsewhere — more tender, clearer, but also more fragile.Since Montjoie, however, one phrase keeps returning between them like an all too convenient joke: "e;both at once."e; Apolline uses it to tease Élise, to keep the advantage, to turn into play what has unsettled her. But by returning again and again, the phrase begins to reveal something else: no longer only the memory of a past audacity, but a deeper question about what each of them gives, receives, refuses, or does not yet dare to name.In a bourgeois apartment where everything seems to be in its place — the flowers, the letters, the ready room, the neatly drawn linen — the smallest imbalance is enough to shift the roles. Élise no longer wants merely to blush. Apolline can no longer merely comment. Between them, tenderness becomes a test, modesty becomes a language, and what had seemed settled suddenly has to be begun again differently.A Story of Both at Once continues Montjoie in a more intimate register: that of a couple discovering that desire is not only a matter of crossing a threshold, but of understanding, afterwards, what that threshold has changed.