Jérôme Leroy's Novel “La Minute prescrite pour l’assaut” Reviewed

Jérôme Leroy, known for his neo‑hussard novels of the early 1990s, shifted to political‑fiction with the 1997 novel Monnaie bleue and later published the dystopian work La Minute prescrite pour l’assaut in 2008. The book follows two protagonists – Kléber, a 45‑year‑old college professor from Roubaix who imagines himself as a Charlton Heston‑type hero, and Sarah, a young police officer fluent in French, firearms and magnum wines – as they navigate a bleak future marked by virus outbreaks, pollution, ethnic‑religious civil war, jihadist attacks, and looming nuclear conflicts. Leroy fills the narrative with baroque references to authors and filmmakers such as Orwell, Philip K. Dick, George A. Romero and John Carpenter, creating a literary game that blends mythological dandysme with apocalyptic satire. The review notes the novel’s dense intertextuality, its portrayal of a society on the brink of ecological and social collapse, and its stylistic mix of horror, noir and speculative fiction.