C'est la faute au soleil
Dominique Lombardi
Mediator - Sylvie Amar
Supporters - Fondation de France, Regional Direction of Cultural Affairs of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (Book Sector), Régional Council of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, "Les Aînés de Peynier" Seniors' Home
Peynier, Bouches-du-Rhône, France, 1998 - 2000
The commission
A book about memory by the inhabitants of the Peynier region.
Smicha Belheine, director of the Peynier library, began recording the village’s history, first with the village children and then with its senior citizens, in cooperation with Claude Peigné, president of the senior citizens’ center. Together, they decided to invite an author to write a book based on the stories collected from the senior citizens. True stories are often the base in the work of novel writer Dominique Lombardi. Here, she goes deeply into this literary form, in a book which combines recipes and stories : On aurait pu être riches, Le deux juillet mille neuf cent trente huit, Les ampoules, … Talks begin and the wild flavour from the hills mingle with the stories ; in a book which lays claim to the inheritance of both La vie, mode d’emploi by Perec and Les lettres de mon moulin by Daudet.
The head of the Library Peynier worked for several years with writers on the memory of the town, during writing workshops organized for children. Wanting to expand on this theme, she teamed up with the Foyer of Elders to order Dominique Lombardi. The writer has collected the stories of village elders. Accompanied by local traditional recipes of the Sainte-Victoire, they are gathered in the book Blame the Sun in the form of short stories.
Dominique Lombardi
The writer Dominique Lombardi was born in 1960 in Marseilles. She lives and works in Marseilles. She is also author of Un, deux, trois, Savine (éditions de l’Aube, 1994), Le quatrième cerveau (L’écailler du Sud, 2003) et Cuisines sur rues (BCD, 1997, cf. p. 144).