Jane Kuntz

Gérard Gavarry

The tale is simple, if grim: a disenfranchised teenage boy from the housing projects on the outskirts of Paris rapes and murders the manager of the supermarket where his mother works. But Gerard Gavarry is a writer who knows how literary inventiveness can shed new light on a serious subject, and Hoppla! 1 2 3 tells its story three times, in three separate sections, each in a different tone or mode and with different sets of images and vocabularies - borrowed from tropical botany, the shipping industry, and ancient Greece. Gavarry's bloody and poetic narrative takes dead aim at the social, political, and personal roots of violence, and argues for the transformative power of fiction.

Hoppla! One, Two, Three

Olivier Rolin

Bringing together a series of brief reflections and musings on bits of hotel stationery and postcards, an editor assembles a mysterious manuscript that describes the protagonist's encounters with a series of hotel rooms in cities around the globe, as well as his involvement with international networks comprised of unsavory thugs and female spies in distress. Original.

Hotel Crystal

Dumitru Țepeneag

Here is a book about a man, supposedly a writer, who tries to write a novel, because he promised his readers he would. But he doesnt have anything to say. He keeps erasing what he writes, and rewriting it, without having the slightest idea where hes going with it. Soon enough he realizes that looking out of the window, sitting in front of his typewriter, describing anything and everything, is not enough to write a novel. His three friends, Edmond, Edgar, and Edouard, will aid him in his task . . . Pigeon Post will be the second book Dalkey Archive has published by the Romanian writer Dumitru Tsepeneag (after the critically acclaimed Vain Art of the Fugue), and the press will be publishing more of his works in the years to come. "[Vain Art of the Fugue] is a work of singular invention and joy, a successful experiment in every aspect of the novel, especially delight." -The Believer "With his metaphors and traps, Dumitru Tsepeneag reminds me of a magician who pulls flowers, animals, and strange objects out of his hat. He lays comical stories over a poignant, and often grim, background." -Journal de Geneve "[Tsepeneag] induces the sense that memory, time, and consciousness are both mutable and, ultimately, unknowable." -Elizabeth Hand, Village Voice "Reading Romanian writer Dumitru Tsepeneags Vain Art of the Fugue is like having a dream, and then remembering it in that diaphanous, vague, next-morning way a dream is recollected. This is a good thing." -The Quarterly Conversation

Pigeon Post

Lydie Salvayre

The Power of Flies begins in a courtroom, where a man is undergoing an interrogation. He has committed a crime, and he must now explain himself. But instead of letting the judge, lawyer, and psychiatrist question him, he asks himself all the questions—and answers them. While ranting on to the court about various topics—his family, the museum where he works as a tour guide, and even the French philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal—the narrator of The Power of Flies reveals himself to be both calculating and unstable. In this latest novel from acclaimed French writer Lydie Salvayre, it is up to the reader to sort through his philosophical diatribe to discover why this man turned killer. "Salvayre's work applies a cheerful irony to very dark preoccupations: chiefly the connection between political repression and family horrors, and the male sickness of authoritarianism. . . . Salvayre is a writer with a mission."London Review of Books "There are innocuous books that charm you, gently surprise you at moments you didn't expect, blissfully put you to sleep, make you dream of princes and princesses. . . . But there are others, like Lydie Salvayre's novels, that make you sit up and take notice, that directly confront you, that shake you up from the very first sentence, warning you that the test is going to be brutal, the dream is going to be dark, and the princess's smile is going to be painful."Le Monde,/P> "Never a false note. . . . One of France's most virtuosic young novelists."Publishers Weekly "A Parisian museum tour guide descends into madness and murder, guided by the works of the philosopher Blaise Pascal, in this distinctive novel published in France in 1995. Salvayre (The Company of Ghosts) has constructed a bleak character study through which she examines the nature of criminality and the way the past conspires to consume our souls. The narrator, held for the murder of an unnamed victim, reveals his story in conversations with the judge, a psychiatrist, and a guard in the jail's infirmary. Through anecdotes about his workplace (the abbey at Port-Royal des Champs, associated with Pascal and the Jansenist movement) and his failing marriage and his memories of a dismal childhood, we see a man struggling 'to gain a foothold in the void.' Ruminations on the futility of existence place this squarely in the tradition of the French existentialists: in a nod to Camus, the narrator's cellmate is in jail for "killing an Arab." There are also echoes of Don Quixote in the flashes of absurd humor and the theme of a man led to his destruction by overzealous reading. Throughout, Salvayre handles this ambitious framework with great sangfroid. Recommended for literary fiction collections."Library Journal "A madmans intense soliloquy in a slim, powerful volume by French author Salvayre (Everyday Life, 2006, etc.). The novel opens in a courtroom, where a former museum tour guide stands trial for murder. The accused engages in one-sided debates with his judge, prison guard, lawyer and psychiatrist. The nameless voice remains the novels sole speaker, and though his rants prove that he is not only neurotic but mentally unbalanced, he is surprisingly eloquent and darkly humorous. We soon learn that the narrators childhood haunts him: Abused by his angry father, he grew up in a house of violence, fear and hatred. He came to find a father figure in his museum boss, but was crushed when his mentor didnt understand and eventually refused to tolerate his erratic behavior. He is obsessed with his selfless, protective, now-dead mother, and is unable to love any other woman. He had a malfunctioning relationship with his wife, verbally and physically abusive, yet she continued to love him—a fact that irritated him to no end. The condemned mans mocking descriptions of social norms and everyday actions (sex, sneezing) is humorous, and his tone, lacking fear and timidity, can be captivating. The accused may be neurotic, self-involved, snobbish and unlikable, but the questions he raises are universal. What is pre-ordained and what is self-willed? How does one 'gain a foothold in the void'? How much sympathy does one owe his fellow man? Well-composed and provocative."Kirkus

Jane Kuntz

Books

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