Paper Conspiracies

(Paperback)

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One of the most sensational incidents in the history of France, the Dreyfus Affair was a landmark federal case involving treason and antisemitism. A controversial documentary about the trial by pioneering filmmaker Georges Mlis caused riots when it was shown in 1899, and was banned from any screening in France for the next three quarters of a century.

Who engineered Dreyfus's conviction Was the man who played him in the film actually murdered by a mob of enraged moviegoers And why is Jack Kews, a shadowy 20th-century Zola in New York City, so determined to find out

A web of intrigue, menace and betrayal reaches through space and time, as the search for keys to a historic trap hones in on a cache of zealously guarded forgeries and tins of crumbling film stock.

"This erudite page-turner takes us from late 19th-century France to the film studios of the great Georges Mlis to the tribulations of a film restorer who finds herself caught up in political intrigue, a century after the famous Affaire Dreyfus. As in her celebrated L. C., Daitch constructs a compelling dialogue with an earlier century that shifts our perspective on our own time." Susan Bernofsky, Foreign Words

"It's Susan Daitch at her finest! A smart, absorbing study of those at the margins of history who, under her deft pen, turn out to be vital. Fascinating story, captivating writing." Deb Olin unferth, Revolution: The Year I Fell In Love and Went to Join the War

". . . Daitch manages to reveal her characters in a light that makes us wonder if we are seeing them as they are or as another shadowy transparency. While the book is extensive in scope, the writing is sharp and lean."The Black Sheep Dances

"Daitch has lost none of the bristling intelligence that makes her work so uniquely literary. . . . Daitch's narrative can certainly be enjoyed as cerebral noir; the cryptic calls and notes delivered to Frances are reminiscent of Paul Auster."The Review of Contemporary Fiction

"The world Susan Daitch spins is like uncovering a lost history first-hand through the eyes and ears of those who were there. An engrossing novel for the age of censorship and redaction."Tottenville Review

"Enthusiastically recommended to fans of highbrow, erudite historical fiction. Readers who enjoy the novels of Umberto Eco, for example, will probably also enjoy those of Ms. Daitch."New York Journal of Books

"Questions of integrity, authenticity and the slipperiness of 'truth' in a politicized society animate Susan Daitch's ambitious and highly satisfying novel about France's infamous Dreyfus Affair and its legacy."Shelf Awareness

Susan Daitch is the author of four novelsThe Lost Civilization of Suolucidir (City Lights) Paper Conspiracies (City Lights), L. C. (Lannan Foundation Selection and NEA Heritage Award), The Coloristand a collection of short stories, Storytown. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications such as The Pushcart Prize Anthology, The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction, and The Brooklyn Rail. Her work was featured in The Review of Contemporary Fiction along with William Vollman and David Foster Wallace. She taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She currently teaches at Hunter College.

Reviews

"In 1993, Susan Daitch was showcased in the Review of Contemporary Fiction alongside David Foster Wallace and William T. Vollmann. Her first novel, L.C., is an unheralded masterpiece, but due to its politics (and the gendered world of literary criticism) it never achieved the critical or commercial success of her peers Wallace and Vollmann. Nonetheless, for many readers the arrival of a new book from Daitch is the most exciting literary event of the year. In Paper Conspiracies, Daitch approaches the Dreyfus Affair, the defining incident of modern anti-semitism before the Shoah, by focusing on the fringes of the case, particularly the film-maker Georges Melies, who made a silent film about Dreyfus. Fin de siecle France is drawn into the present by a film restorer trying to save the Melies movie. As expected, Daitch's prose is intelligent and beautiful."--Hey Small Press "Like Herzog's study of Viennese literature, Susan Daitch's third novel, Paper Conspiracies (City Lights, August), shuttles from the fin de siecle to the present, only in France. Daitch takes her impetus from the silent movie about Alfred Dreyfus made by the cinematic pioneer Georges Melies, best known for his fanciful A Trip to the Moon (1902). A film in which one of the first masters of special effects took on a sensational political event makes good sense as a jumping-off point for Daitch's formally experimental, intertextual fiction. She's the sort of writer who favors footnotes and who imagines how the Yiddish-speaker who busted Lenny Bruce felt; David Foster Wallace once called her 'one of the most intelligent and attentive writers at work in the U.S. today.'"--Tablet Magazine

Author Bio

Susan Daitch is the author of two novels, L.C. (Lannan Foundation Selection and NEA Heritage Award), The Colorist, and a collection of short stories, Storytown. Her work has appeared in Tinhouse, Conjunctions, Guernica, Bomb, Ploughshares, failbetter.com, McSweeney's The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction VLS, The Brooklyn Rail. Her work was featured in The Review of Contemporary Fiction along with William Vollman and David Foster Wallace. Her fiction has been the subject of The Poetics of Postmodernism (Linda Hucheons, Routledge), History Made, History Imagined (David Price, University of Illinois), among others. She has taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She currently teaches at Hunter College.