Disruptive Images, Historical Friction On the Work of David Van Reybrouck

Literary awards have rained down on this young writer (b. 1971) who gave up un academic career. Especially Congo, a history (published in 2010 at the commemoration of fifty years of the former Belgian colony's independence) was in both literary and historical terms an unparalleled tour de force. A literary non fiction book, a novel, some plays and poems, a pamphlet on populism, a commitment in politics by organising a civil initiative as a response to the political crisis in Belgium and the crisis in representative democracy as a whole: this passionate intellectual is the hope of a new generation, having expanded the Flemish community to which he belongs into an international community – affected by beauty, intrigued by history, focused on a future which rediscovers democracy.