The Fear of the First Line
Publisher
:
Phébus
Parution date
:
2005
EAN
:
9782752900395
Number of pages
:
187
Description
***Prix Littéraire de la Vocation 2005***
***Full translation grant available***
***The story “A Guide to Famous Stabbings” was published in the January 2010 edition of Subtropics.***
***Foreign rights sold in South Korea (Munhakdongne) and Spain (Acantilado/Quaderns Crema)***
From critically acclaimed Belgian author Bernard Quiriny comes a dazzling collection of darkly comic stories unified by the presence of the enigmatic Pierre Gould. Quiriny’s writing about the writer skitters between frenzied fantasy and mundane reality but always keeps the reader solidly on the page.
Pierre Gould, like so many writers, is trying in the title story to find the perfect first line for his novel. But unlike what happens for most other writers, that first line might be his last line. The next stories feature a well-intentioned intruder; a dedicated employee of the Lie Factory, an international company that specializes in the art of cunning and propaganda; and a thief who, although able to walk through walls, gets stuck in his mistress’s walls. In the last stories, Gould writes a guide to famous stabbings, all the while plotting the death of his literary mentors, and in a final adventure, he finds evidence of Flann O’Brien’s “mollycule theory,” which holds that a man can turn into a bicycle.
Every story offers a new occasion to experience a parallel world, often a world on the absurd edge of commonplace and always peopled with odd characters who tear apart the norm—the same norm we spend time criticizing and yet imposing on ourselves.
Author
Bernard Quiriny : Born in 1978, Bernard Quiriny is a Belgian Francophone writer currently living in Burgundy. His second collection, Contes Carnivores (Le Seuil, 2008), with a preface by Enrique Vila-Matas, won Belgium’s top literary prize, the Prix Rossel. Quiriny is a frequent contributor to Chronic’Art, Epok, and Le Magazine Littéraire
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