Tag Archives: French

The Cotton Fortress (La forteresse de coton) by Philippe Curval

Posted on July 29, 2019 by

“The Cotton Fortress” or, more accurately, “the Cotton Castle” is the meaning of the Turkish name Pamukkale given to the thermal water resort famous for its snow-white travertine terraces formed by the calcium carbonide-rich springs over millennia. According to the … Continue reading →

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Bastard Battle by Céline Minard

Posted on October 4, 2018 by

Céline Minard’s novel is written in a brilliant pastiche of Middle French speckled with amusing anachronisms. She has drawn inspiration from Jean Froissart’s Chronicles as well as Villon’s poems and Rabelais’ satirical pentalogy. The other major source of influence lies in … Continue reading →

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Guest Post: Simon Collings on Georges Limbour

Posted on September 4, 2018 by

Michel Leiris, writing in Atoll in 1968, described the writer Georges Limbour as: ‘a great poet in every heart-beat of what he wrote, but a poet without fanfare or vain display’. In ‘a society less gross than ours’ Leiris went on to … Continue reading →

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Forthcoming: Radiant Terminus by Antoine Volodine

Posted on November 24, 2016 by

Antoine Volodine’s radioactive phantasmagoria, in which futuristic communism is intertwined with the magic of East Slavic oral traditions, is forthcoming from Open Letter Books in Jeffrey Zuckerman’s translation. You might remember that I mentioned this novel among the most notable … Continue reading →

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Three Notable Novels

Posted on June 20, 2015 by

Here are some highlights about this year’s three notable books written in languages other than English .  The German novels have already been published, whereas the French one is coming soon. The first German title that caught my attention is Ulrich … Continue reading →

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Submission (Soumission) by Michel Houellebecq

Posted on January 9, 2015 by

The European civilisation subjugated and humiliated by the onslaught of Islamist hordes, the forced conversions, the public executions in the squares, the burning of “profane” books,  all this to the accompaniment of a plangent summons of a muezzin up in the … Continue reading →

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The Absolute Marshal (Le Maréchal absolu) by Pierre Jourde

Posted on July 26, 2014 by

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that Pierre Jourde’s doorstopper went largely unnoticed in the English language media discussing the rentrée of 2012. The more interesting it appeared to me, since I am wildly excited by the recent spate … Continue reading →

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Forthcoming: Fragments of Lichtenberg by Pierre Senges

Posted on July 8, 2014 by

Luckily for many, Dalkey Archive is going to publish this autumn  Fragments of Lichtenberg  (translated into English by  Gregory Flanders), the bulky encyclopedic novel about the 18th century German scientist  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and his literary heritage. The playful premise of the … Continue reading →

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La rentrée 2014: what to look forward to

Posted on July 1, 2014 by

I am reading this huge French novel with echoes of Pynchon, Borges and Augusto Roa Bastos that I hope to review for this blog in the near future. While I’m at it, let’s take a look at some of the books … Continue reading →

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