Henri Duchemin And His Shadows

(Paperback, Main)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Though little-known now, Emmanuel Bove was one of the most original writers to come out of twentieth-century France and a popular success in his day. Discovered by Colette, who in 1924 arranged for the publication of his first novel, Mes amis, Bove went on to have a busy literary career, writing close to a book a year, until the German occupation silenced him. During his lifetime, Bove's novels and stories were admired by writers as varied as Rainer Maria Rilke, the surrealists, Albert Camus, and Samuel Beckett, who said of Bove that "more than anyone else he has an instinct for the essential detail." Contemporary fans include Peter Handke and John Ashbery. Henry Duchemin and His Shadows is the perfect introduction to Bove's world, with its cast of impoverished and forlorn but oddly stubborn isolatoes who call to mind Herman Melville's Bartleby, Robert Walser's various "little men," and Jean Rhys's lost women. Deploying only the simplest words and sparest sentences, Bove depicts a crepuscular urban world with photographic exactitude. The poet of the flophouse and the dive, the park bench and the pigeon's crumb, and of days and nights as endless as the city streets, Bove is also a deeply empathetic writer for whom no defeat is so great as to silence desire.

Reviews

"Shadows and shadow selves do indeed pervade the six stories in this collection, brought together in English for the first time...each of [Boves] meticulously crafted stories discloses a quasi-surrealism with dashes of Poe, Kafka, and Dostoyevsky. Bove also shows himself a master of marginalization and fragmented relationships...An elegant translation of dark, brooding, and disturbing little narratives. Kirkus Reviews

One of the best novelists to emerge in France during the interwar years . . . a unique, powerful, and insightful stylist."The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The writing is so clear, so modest, and yet not at all modest. Its a form of writing that doesnt exist before him, nor since. Its like drawing with very clear lines.Peter Handke

The neat turns of Bove's stories make them engaging little reads...What makes the collection worthwhile is the writing, Bove's deft touch and turns of phrase consistently impressing. These are sad stories, but the craftsmanship behind them makes for considerable reading pleasure. M. A. Orthofer, The Complete Review

Author Bio

Emmanuel Bove (1898-1945) was a French journalist and novelist. He had been publishing popular novels under the pseudonym Jean Vallois for several years when Colette helped him publish the novel Mes amis under his own name. He continued publishing successful novels until World War II, at which time he was forced into exile in Algeria. He died of heart failure soon after returning to Paris from exile. Alyson Waters has translated several works from the French by Albert Cossery, Louis Aragon, Rene Belletto, and many others and has received a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, a PEN Translation Fund grant, and residency grants from the Centre National du Livre and Villet Gillet in Lyon. She teaches literary translation in the French department of Yale University and is the managing editor of Yale French Studies. She lives in Brooklyn. Donald Breckenridge is the fiction editor of The Brooklyn Rail, co-editor of InTranslation, managing editor of Red Dust and the author of more than a dozen plays, a novella, and the novels 6/2/95, You Are Here, and This Young Girl Passing. He lives in Brooklyn.