"The whole town had gone mad. [...] They felt that they would lose their world and they were afraid".

Laurent Gaudé (Prix Goncourt 2004) sets the tone for his dystopian thriller "Dog 51" on the very first page: The scenario developed in it of the three-zone society of the 2050s, brutally scarred by ecological destruction and autocratic capitalism, reflects our fears today: what political future awaits us?

Laurent Gaudé, born in Paris in 1972, was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 2004 for his novel "Le soleil des Scorta". "Dog 51" was the favorite book of the French book trade in 2022 and was translated into German by Christian Kolb in 2023.

The "Romance Quartet" is an open discussion group that offers the opportunity to get to know books from France or about France and other Romance countries and thus learn something about society, culture and politics. The quartet members are academics from the University of Kassel and present the works selected for their particular current relevance from their various specialist perspectives and invite all interested parties to join in the discussion.

There are currently five members of the quartet (one person is always the joker!): Christine Pflüger (Didactics of History), Agnieszka Komorowska (Romance Literary Studies), Sabine Ruß-Sattar (Comparative Politics), Jörg Requate (History of Western Europe) Jan Witthaus (Romance Literary Studies).

The Romance Quartet is a cooperation partner of the Franco-German Forum Kassel.