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French Corner
C'est quoi, des histoires pressees ? Des histoires qui ont hate de se terminer. Et ca parle de quoi ? De ce qui existe, de ce qui n'existe pas. C'est drole, au moins ? Souvent, mais ca depend de toi.
Written in a French style that long defied successful translation--Cocteau was always a poet no matter what we was writing--the book came into its own for English-language readers in 1955 when this translation was completed by Rosamund Lehmann. It is a masterpiece of the art of translation of which the Times Literary Supplement said: It has the rare merit of reading as though it were an English original. Lehrmann was able to capture the essence of Cocteau's strange, necromantic imagination and to bring fully to life in English his story of a brother and sister, orphaned in adolescence, who build themselves a private world out of one shared room and their own unbridled fantasies. What started in games and laughter because for Paul and Elisabeth a drug too magical to resist. The crime which finally destroys them has the inevitability of Greek tragedy. Illustrated with twenty of Cocteau's own drawings.
Brilliant and tense, Dany Laferrière's first novel, How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired, is as fresh and relevant today as when it was first published in Canada in 1985. With ribald humor and a working-class intellectualism on par with Charles Bukowski's or Henry Miller's, Laferrière's narrator wanders the streets and slums of Montreal, has sex with white women, and writes a book to save his life. With this novel, Laferrière began a series of internationally acclaimed social and political novels about the love of the world, and the world of sex, including Heading South and I Am a Japanese Writer. It launched Laferrière as one of the literary world's finest provocateurs and continues to draw strong comparisons to the writings of James Baldwin, Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, and Jack Kerouac. The book was made into a feature film and translated into several languages -- this is the first U.S. edition.
Now in paperback, René Char's Hypnos is both a remarkable work of literature and a document of unique significance in the history of the French Resistance. Hailed by the poet Paul Eluard as an "absolute masterpiece" upon its first appearance in 1946, René Char's Hypnos is both a remarkable work of literature and a document of unique significance in the history of the French Resistance. Based on a journal Char kept during his time in the Maquis, it ranges in style from abrupt and sometimes enigmatic reflections, in which the poet seeks to establish compass bearings in the darkness of Occupied France, to narrative descriptions that throw into vivid relief the dramatic and often tragic nature of the issues he had to confront as the head of his Resistance network. A tribute to the individual men and women who fought at his side, this volume is also a meditation on the white magic of poetry and a celebration of the power of beauty to combat terror and transform our lives. Translated into German by Paul Celan and into Italian by Vittorio Sereni, the book has never been carried over into English with the attention to style and detail that it deserves. Published in full here for the first time, this long-awaited new translation does justice at last to the incandescence and pathos of the original French.
"[Jerusalem] is a small miracle: concise, even-handed, highly particular." --The Guardian
Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City is the acclaimed graphic memoirist Guy Delisle's strongest work yet, a thoughtful and moving travelogue about life in contemporary Jerusalem. Delisle expertly lays the groundwork for a cultural road map of the Holy City, utilizing the classic "stranger in a strange land" point of view that made his other books required reading for understanding what daily life is like in cities few are able to travel to. Jerusalem explores the complexities of a city that represents so much to so many. It eloquently examines the impact of conflict on the lives of people on both sides of the wall while drolly recounting the quotidian: checkpoints, traffic jams, and holidays.
Céline's masterpiece--colloquial, polemic, hyper realistic--boils over with bitter humor and revulsion at society's idiocy and hypocrisy: Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of cruelty and violence that hurtles through the improbable travels of the petit bourgeois (and largely autobiographical) antihero, Bardamu: from the trenches of WWI, to the African jungle, to New York, to the Ford Factory in Detroit, and finally to life in Paris as a failed doctor. Ralph Manheim's pitch-perfect translation captures Céline's savage energy, and a dynamic afterword by William T. Vollmann presents a fresh, furiously alive take on this astonishing novel.
J'écris de chez les moches, pour les moches, les frigides, les mal baisées, les imbaisables, toutes les exclues du grand marché à la bonne meuf, aussi bien que pour les hommes qui n'ont pas envie d'ètre protecteurs, ceux qui voudraient l'ètre mais ne savent pas s'y prendre, ceux qui ne sont pas ambitieux, ni compétitifs, ni bien membrés.
Parce que l'idéal de la femme blanche séduisante qu'on nous brandit tout le temps sous le nez, je crois bien qu'il n'existe pas.
V.D.
En racontant pour la première fois comment elle est devenue Virginie Despentes, l'auteur de Baise-moi conteste les discours bien-pensants sur le viol, la prostitution, la pornographie. Manifeste pour un nouveau féminisme.
Parce que l'idéal de la femme blanche séduisante qu'on nous brandit tout le temps sous le nez, je crois bien qu'il n'existe pas.
V.D.
En racontant pour la première fois comment elle est devenue Virginie Despentes, l'auteur de Baise-moi conteste les discours bien-pensants sur le viol, la prostitution, la pornographie. Manifeste pour un nouveau féminisme.
Venez découvrir le roman de Marguerite Duras grâce à une analyse littéraire de référence ! Écrite par un spécialiste universitaire, cette fiche de lecture est recommandée par de nombreux enseignants. Cet ouvrage contient la biographie de l'écrivain, le résumé détaillé, le mouvement littéraire, le contexte de publication de l'oeuvre et l'analyse complète. Retrouvez tous nos titres sur: www.fichedelecture.fr.