Publishing, the Rules of the Trade

Le Procès de Jean-Marie Le Pen

Mathieu Lindon, P.O. L, original edition, 1998 Coll. Bfm - Limoges

Le procès de Jean-Marie Le Pen by Mathieu Lindon tells the story of a lawyer, Jewish, homosexual and left-wing, acting as defence council for a militant of the French National Front who deliberately killed a young Arab. Although the writer focuses on the far-right leader during the hearings, his ambition, more complex, is to demonstrate one thing: that the strategies of opposition deployed by anti-Le pen militants are not effective. The leader of the National Front sued the author for libel, claiming that things said by the lawyer and anti-racist militants in the novel offended his honour. Successively at the first hearing, in the Appeal Court, then at the European Court of Human Rights in 2007, the judge found in his favour. For the judges, opinions expressed by fictional characters about the character Jean-Marie Le Pen created by the novelist – and not against the real person – are defamatory. A decision that ignores the freedom of creation.