Philippe Claudel

Forced into a brutal concentration camp during a great war, Brodeck returns to his village at the war's end and takes up his old job of writing reports for a governmental bureau. One day a stranger comes to live in the village. His odd manner and habits arouse suspicions: His speech is formal, he takes long, solitary walks, and although he is unfailingly friendly and polite, he reveals nothing about himself. When the stranger produces drawings of the village and its inhabitants that are both unflattering and insightful, the villagers murder him. The authorities who witnessed the killing tell Brodeck to write a report that is essentially a whitewash of the incident. As Brodeck writes the official account, he sets down his version of the truth in a separate, parallel narrative. In measured, evocative prose, he weaves into the story of the stranger his own painful history and the dark secrets the villagers have vigilantly keep hidden. Set in an unnamed time and place, Brodeck blends the familiar and unfamiliar, myth and history into a work of extraordinary power and resonance. Readers of J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace, Bernhard Schlink's The Reade,r and Kafka will be captivated by Brodeck.

Traumatized by memories of his war-ravaged country, and with his son and daughter-in-law dead, Monsieur Linh travels to a foreign land to bring the child in his arms to safety. The other refugees in the detention centre are unsure how to help the old man; his caseworkers are compassionate, but overworked. Monsieur Linh struggles beneath the weight of his sorrow, and becomes increasingly bewildered and isolated in this strange, fast-moving town. And then he encounters Monsieur Bark. Neither speaks the other's language, but Monsieur Bark is sympathetic to the foreigner's need to care for the child. Recently widowed and equally alone, he is eager to talk, and Monsieur Linh knows how to listen. The two men share their solitude, and find friendship in an unlikely dialogue between two very different cultures" -- Publisher description.

From his village in post-war France, Brodeck makes his solitary journeys into the mountains to collect data on the natural environment. Day by day he also reconstructs his own life, all but lost in the years he spent in a camp during the war. No-one had expected to see him again. One day, a flamboyant stranger rides into the village, upsetting the fragile balance of everyday life. Soon he is named the Anderer, ???the other???, and tensions rise until, one night, the newcomer is murdered. Brodeck is instructed to write an account of the events leading to his death, but his report delivers much more than the bare facts: it becomes the story of a community coming to terms with the legacy of enemy occupation. In a powerful narrative of exceptional fascination, Brodeck's Report explores the very limits of humanity. About The Author Philippe Claudel is a university lecturer, novelist and film director, born in 1962 in Dombasle-sur-Meurthe. He woke up one morning with the opening sentence of Brodeck's Report in his head: ???My name is Brodeck and I am not responsible.??? John Cullen is a translator from French, Spanish, Italian and German. He has twice been shortlisted for the IMPAC award, and was shortlisted for the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger in 2007.

The Investigator is despatched to a provincial town to find out the truth behind a disturbing spate of suicides amongst employees of the Firm. But from the moment he steps off the train, he finds himself in a world that is alien, unrecognisable, and diabolically complex. From the hostile weather and the fickle hospitality at Hotel Hope to the town's bewildering inhabitants, everything seems to be against him to the point where he wonders whether he is trapped in a recurring nightmare, or has passed into the realm of death itself.

Een oorlogswees wordt nooit helemaal geaccepteerd in een Frans dorp.

The novel's plot is deceptively straightforward: an Investigator, sent by his institution to analyze a worrying trend in suicides in a large enterprise in some middle-sized town, is caught up in a bureaucratic horror story while attempting to fulfill his mission. But this provoking and disturbing novel takes the reader on an investigative journey into the depths of existentialist probing: What comprises an individual? How much are we each ourselves and how much a product of circumstances, subject to external forces that we do not, or possibly cannot, control?

A middle-aged filmmaker visits Indonesia and becomes entranced by the Toraja custom of interning the bodies of very young deceased children in the trunks of trees. In time, the trunk heals, encasing and protecting the tiny bodies as the tree grows slowly heavenwards. On his return to France, the filmmaker receives news that his dearest friend is dying of cancer, prompting a reflection on the part death occupies in our existence, our inability to confront our mortality and our struggle to conceive of a happy life after a devastating loss. For the Toraja, dying is a central part of being alive. Death is at the forefront of their culture, unlike the western preference for keeping death firmly in the shadows, unacknowledged until it begins to really breathe down your neck and simply cannot be ignored; a taboo subject to be feared and resented. Like the trees of the Toraja, this powerful novel encloses and preserves memories of lost loves and friendships, and contains the promise of rebirth and rebuilding, even after a terrible tragedy.

Philippe Claudel's highly original new book is an autobiographical evocation - one might even call it an olfactory memoir - of his beloved pays natal in Lorraine, where he has lived all his life. Sixty-three brief essays conjure up the distillation of the fragrances or scents associated with his childhood and adolescence, and which evoke a forgotten world: acacia, mist, coal, the swimming pool, his mother's sun cream lotion, the cemetery, churches, first love, fried bacon, Gauloises and Gitanes, a sleeping child, communal showers, hay, cinnamon, his uncle's pullover, amidst countless other scattered perfumes that have shaped his life. They are smells that may have enchanted him, uplifted him or troubled him, leaving their mark on the sensibilities of this celebrated film maker and novelist.

"" Qu'est-ce que c'est les vivants ? À première vue, tout n'est qu'évidence. Être avec les vivants. Être dans la vie. Mais qu'est-ce que cela signifie, profondément, être vivant ? Quand je respire et marche, quand je mange, quand je rêve, suis-je pleinement vivant ? Quand je sens la chaleur douce d'Elena, suis-je davantage vivant ? Quel est le plus haut degré du vivant ? " Un cinéaste au mitan de sa vie perd son meilleur ami et réfléchit sur la part que la mort occupe dans notre existence. Entre deux femmes magnifiques, entre le présent et le passé, dans la mémoire des visages aimés et la lumière des rencontres inattendues, LArbre du pays Toraja célèbre les promesses de la vie."--Page 4 of cover.

We have become monsters. We could be grieved. It's best just to laugh--Translation of page 4 of cover by espace culturel

"A bestseller in France and winner of the Prix Renaudot, By a Slow River is a mesmerizing and atmospheric tale of three mysterious deaths in an oddly isolated French village during World War I. The placid daily life of a small town near the front seems impervious to the nearby pounding of artillery fire and the parade of wounded strangers passing through its streets. But the illusion of calm is soon shattered by the deaths of three innocents-the charming new schoolmistress who captures every male heart only to kill herself; an angelic ten-year-old girl who is found strangled; and a local policeman's cherished wife, who dies alone in labor while her husband is hunting the murderer. Twenty years later, the policeman still struggles to make sense of these tragedies, a struggle that both torments and sustains him. But excavating the town's secret history will bring neither peace to him nor justice to the wicked."--Publisher's website. In this indelible meditation on morality, the daily life of a small French town is shattered by the deaths of three innocents during the First World War.