Vers la sobriété heureuse (new edition Pierre Rabhi. Preface by Matthieu Ricard

14 × 19 cm 160 pages softback october 2021 estimated retail price: 15 €

rights sold to germany (matthes & seitz), china (clap), the netherlands (mamer)

A farmer, writer and French thinker of Algerian origin, Pierre Rabhi is an advocate of a lifestyle and a society that is more respectful of nature and our fellow human beings. He has championed the development of agroecology throughout the world, especially in Africa where it has contributed to food self-sufficiency and safe and healthy diets for local communities. He is the founder of many associations, including Colibris and Terre & Humanisme, and is the author of numerous books, including Vers la sobriété heureuse (Actes Sud, 2010). As part of the “Domaine du possible” collection, Olivier Le Naire has published a book of interviews entitled Pierre Rabhi semeur d’espoirs (Actes Sud, 2013).

THE POWER OF RESTRAINT

Pierre Rabhi Preface by Matthieu Ricard New edition

Pierre Rabhi, whose luminous philosophy has been lighting up the French publishing landscape for so many years, hardly needs any introduction. The first edition of this major work, Vers la sobriété heureuse, was a global success. To mark the tenth anniversary of the “Domaine du possible” collection created by his friend Cyril Dion, we have decided to showcase this founding text by publishing an updated edition (of the “Practical Guide” section) with a brand-new double preface from Pierre Rabhi and Matthieu Ricard. At the end of the 1950s, a 20-year-old Pierre Rabshi decided that he wanted to return to the land and distance himself from the rootless civilisation that was taking shape before his eyes and would ultimately come to be known as “Les Trente Glorieuses” (three decades of sustained economic growth). Having witnessed first-hand during his childhood in the south of Algeria the brutal shift from a traditionally poor but viable society to a state of desperate destitution, he then observed how in France the labourers in the fields and factories were becoming alienated from the process of earning a living, encouraged to accept a form of personal effacement for the sole purpose of keeping the economic machine turning in line with the unquestioned dogma of the age. In the quest for unlimited growth, economics elevated predation to the status of a science. The filial and visceral bond with nature was broken, with the natural world becoming no more than a deposit of resources to be exploited – and exhausted. And the personal experiences recounted in this book gradually guided Pierre Rabhi to an indisputable truth. Only by choosing to moderate our needs and desires and willingly consenting to a liberating restraint in our actions can we break with this self-consuming drive known as “globalisation”. Only then can we do justice to the human and natural world and restore equanimity and zest to the world around us.

VERS LA SOBRIÉTÉ HEUREUSE PIERRE RABHI NOUVELLE ÉDITION préface de Matthieu Ricard

DOMAINE DU POSSIBLE