Antoine Volodine

"From Antoine Volodine comes a novel whose full meaning, its author asserts, will be found not in the book's pages but in the dreams people will have after reading it. In Minor Angels Volodine depicts a postcataclysmic world in which the forces of capitalism have begun to reestablish themselves. Sharply opposed to such a trend, a group of crones confined to a nursing home - all of them apparently immortal - resolves to create an avenging grandson fashioned of lint and rags. Though conjured to crush the rebirth of capitalism, the grandson is instead seduced by its charms - only to fall back into the hands of his creators, where he manages to forestall his punishment by reciting one "narract" a day. It is these narracts, or prose poems, that compose the text of Minor Angels."--BOOK JACKET.

Antoine Volodine has been hailed as one of the most innovative and accomplished writers in France today. Compared by critics to Franz Kafka and Lewis Carroll, Volodine weaves an unusual novel of political and psychological intrigue in a lush, exotic setting. The publication of Naming the Jungle marks his American debut and the first translation of his work into English. Puesto Libertad could be any Latin American city torn by the strife of civil war. In this isolated capital buried in the jungle, the revolutionary secret police have started digging into Fabian Golpiez's past. In order to avoid brutal torture and interrogation, he decides to feign madness. Led by a local shaman/psychiatrist in a bizarre talking cure, Golpiez must use indigenous names to prove both his innocence and his true Tupi Indian identity. To name is to conquer. He names the monkeys, the plants, and the insects all around him as he names his fears, his paranoia, and his pathologies.

Récit assez diffus en forme de parabole. Comment le fascisme, ici le "frondisme", intolérant et bête peut écraser la culture et le goût.

Here we have the anatomy of the contemporary writer, imagined by the pseudonymous, “post-exotic” Antoine Volodine. His writers are not the familiar, bitter, alcoholic kind; nor are they great, romantic, tortured geniuses; and least of all are they media darlings and socialites. In Volodine’s universe, the writer is pitted in a pathetic struggle against silence and sickness, when she is not about to be murdered by random lunatics or fellow inmates. Consisting of seven loosely interlocking stories, Writers exposes a chaotic reality in which self expression elicits repercussions both absurd and frighteningly familiar.