Followers of Futuribles ought to enjoy The USB Key, the new novel by Jean-Philippe Toussaint. It is set against the backdrop of foresight and futures work, and even features the Futuribles’ former offices.
The hero of the novel, Jean Detrez, is a strategic foresight specialist at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Brussels. His backstory: before becoming an EU official, he worked in the 1990s as an editor at the journal Futuribles. He was based in our Paris offices, then located at 55, rue de Varenne, just next to the Prime Minister’s residence at Matignon.
On pages 147 and 148, the reader is given a guided tour of the site: the meeting room and its moldings, the old bathroom converted into an office on the ground floor, and the Gaston Berger archives in the cellars. Toussaint, who also wrote La Sal
