Works Christian Delâge

Manière douce (new novel)

A modern-day scribe by profession, thirty-year-old Régis Folio writes everything from administrative letters to private biographies.
When Renaud de Silly commissions him to write the biography of his wife, who had died three years earlier, Régis has no idea he will end up delving into the history of the Algerian war and its repercussions. As he interviews his client, Régis realises he is not telling him the whole story. Who are the Arab servants who live on his estate? Did Jeanne de Silly really die in an accident?

With the complicity of the attractive Marie-Jeanne, the couple’s only daughter, Régis digs up the past to discover what made Renaud de Silly commission the biography of his wife, a woman who died so young and whose life story is so bland it has to conceal something. The love that blossoms between the two young people will make Régis meddle in other people’s business to avoid the worst.

A whole picture gallery of characters wind their way through Manière douce, from ex-combatants of the SAC and OAS to the small-time provincial aristocracy, from the heroes and miscreants of the Algerian war to the friends of Régis Folio, regional journalists by profession and musicians in their free time.

Manière douce is the first volume of the adventures of Régis Folio.

La Dernière Ligne droite (Éditions du Rocher, 2007)

Maurice was born in a magical place, the Haras du Pin stud farm, in the heart of the Orne, where his father is a stud official. Order and beauty envelop his life. At the age of thirteen, he has his first revelation: he knows he will become a jockey. It seems an obvious choice, mirroring the unshakeable orderliness in which he has grown up.
Maurice is a natural. His career gets off to a great start. He is greedy too – for sensations, for the good life and for the pleasures of love. Perhaps overconfident, he does not see the danger signs approaching: the dangers of weight, the implacable enemy of racehorse riders, with its stream of destructive rewards; of women, who cannot unite their destiny with a man who risks his life from day to day; and of the conventions of a world of tidy certainties.
The last revelation awaiting Maurice is Hélène.
The love of a lifetime, or the worst of blisses. He realises the world is not made for those whose sole quest is to live their dreams. But even so he does not give up. As always, he decides to make a choice.

Le coup de cœur de Jerôme Garcin du 19 avril 2007. Le Nouvel Observateur

Fou du roi (Éditions du Rocher, 2006)

William Dicken is a renowned artist and breeder of winning thoroughbreds, a man who cultivates a sense of humour, common sense and marital wellbeing and who has everything going for him to end his life as pleasantly as he started it.
But chance and critical timing make him cross paths with an unsettling female rider, Lea, and an over-fiery show jumper, Fou du Roi. Two names he will find it hard to forget…

Set against the background of the green fields and coasts of Normandy and moving at the stressful pace of international competing, the book tells the story of an encounter caught up in a crazy spiral of wagers, scheming and vanities.

“Fou du roi is the first, promising novel of Christian Delâge”. Le coup de cœur de Jerôme Garcin. Le Nouvel Observateur

“Not every author manages to keep readers holding on with baited breath, especially not in their first novel”, Le Parisien