Jonathan Littell's stories, first published by Fata Morgana, are not so much examples of short prose by the author of the famous novel "The Kindly Ones," for which he received the Goncourt Prize in 2006, as they are another product of his exploration of transgressive reality.

Apparently, not wanting to tie himself to a specific medium, Littell captures this reality in journalistic reports, fiction, and documentary films. This reality is always permeated with violence. However, while "The Kindly Ones" focuses on violence on an industrial scale and leaves intimate life on the periphery, Littell's stories shift the focus precisely to the latter.

The style of these stories is sometimes almost documentary, sometimes intensely personal, avoiding anything superfluous and striving to materialize the word. The same images and motifs repeat in different combinations, weaving into a kind of pattern formed by fluctuations in intensity, which brings the narrative closer to music. The author himself refers to his stories as "études" in the musical sense, meaning exercises that help master a technique.