Antoine Volodine
Список книг автора Antoine VolodineRadiant Terminus
"Irreducible to any single literary genre, the Volodinian cosmos is skillfully crafted, fusing elements of science fiction with magical realism and political commentary."– Music & Literature The most patently sci-fi work of Antoine Volodine's to be translated into English, Radiant Terminus takes place in a Tarkovskian landscape after the fall of the Second Soviet Union. Most of humanity has been destroyed thanks to a number of nuclear meltdowns, but a few communes remain, including one run by Solovyei, a psychotic father with the ability to invade people's dreams—including those of his daughters—and torment them for thousands of years. When a group of damaged individuals seek safety from this nuclear winter in Solovyei's commune, a plot develops to overthrow him, end his reign of mental abuse, and restore humanity. Fantastical, unsettling, and occasionally funny, Radiant Terminus is a key entry in Volodine's epic literary project that—with its broad landscape, ambitious vision, and interlocking characters and ideas—calls to mind the best of David Mitchell. Antoine Volodine (a.k.a. Lutz Bassmann, a.k.a. Manuela Draeger) is the primary pseudonym of a French writer who has published more than forty books, over twenty under this name. Seven of his titles are currently available in English translation, including Minor Angels, Bardo or Not Bardo, and Post-Exoticism in Ten Lessons, Lesson Eleven. Jeffrey Zuckerman is digital editor of Music & Literature. His writing and translations have appeared in Best European Fiction, 3:AM Magazine, the Rumpus, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Bardo or Not Bardo
Volodine's reputation has been growing over the past few years, with books coming out from Open Letter, Dalkey Archive Press, Dorothy, and the University of Nebraska. He won the Prix Médicis in 2014 for his latest novel, Terminus radieux, which is forthcoming from Open Letter. His lengthy essay in The New Inquiry about post-exoticism and his project—one in which he publishes numerous books under a plethora of pseudonyms, all connected in oblique and direct ways—generated a lot of social media buzz and provided a solid starting point for those new to his work. The Paris Review will be running an interview with Volodine later this fall.
Post-Exoticism in Ten Lessons, Lesson Eleven
"The interconnected works of Volodine—think Faulkner, but after an apocalypse—constitute the most exciting project in contemporary French literature."—Maria Clementi That is what we had called post-exoticism. It was a construction connected to revolutionary shamanism and literature. . . . It was an interior construction, a withdrawal, a secret welcoming land, but also something offensive that participated in the plot of certain unarmed individuals against the capitalist world and its countless ignominies. This fight was now confined solely to Bassmann's lips. Like with Antoine Volodine's other works ( Minor Angels , We Monks & Soldiers ), Post-Exoticism in Ten Lessons, Lesson Eleven takes place in a corrupted future where a small group of radical writers—those who practice «post-exoticism»—have been jailed by those in power and are slowly dying off. But before Lutz Bassmann, the last post-exoticist writer, passes away, a couple journalists will try and pry out all the secrets of this powerful literary movement.With its explanations of several key «post-exoticist» terms that appear in Volodine's other books, Lesson Eleven provides a crucial entryway into one of the most ambitious literary projects of recent times: a project exploring the revolutionary power of literature. Antoine Volodine is the author of dozens of books under a few different pseudonyms, including Lutz Bassmann and Manuela Draeger. These novels—several of which are available in English—articulate a post-exoticist universe filled with secrets, revolutionary writers, and spiders. J. T. Mahany is a graduate of the University of Rochester's MA in Literary Translation Studies program and is currently enrolled in the MFA program at the University of Arkansas.