After a year of residence at the prestigious Villa Médicis in Rome, his third novel, Tuez-les tous ("Kill them all"), marked a turning point in his inspiration with the choice of a complex and painful subject. He put himself in the shoes of a terrorist of September 11, dissecting the mechanisms of violence and alienation of terrorists. He pursues the novelistic study of the religious fact - a never innocent choice - with his last novel Le silence de Mahomet, published in September 2008 and selected for the Prix Goncourt, the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens and the Prix Renaudot.