Seven Houses in France

(Paperback)

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Longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2012 - a dark tale of human ambition by the European master A.S. Byatt called 'A brilliantly inventive writer'. 1903, and Captain Lalande Biran, overseeing a garrison on the banks of the Congo, has an ambition- to amass a fortune and return to the literary cafes of Paris. His glamorous wife Christine has a further ambition- to own seven houses in France, a house for every year he has been abroad. At the Captain's side are an ex-legionnaire womaniser, and a servile, treacherous man who dreams of running a brothel. At their hands the jungle is transformed into a wild circus of human ambition and absurdity. But everything changes with the arrival of a new officer and brilliant marksman- the enigmatic Chrysostome Li ge.

Reviews

A dark comedy about the vanity of human desires which deftly balances compassion and cynicism * Financial Times *
Bizarrely funny and beautifully crafted * Times Literary Supplement *
Undeniably compelling * Daily Mail *
A brilliantly inventive writer...He understands the nature of storytelling and is at once terribly moving and wildly funny -- A. S. Byatt
Seven Houses in France is an enjoyable, somewhat frightening novel by one of Europe's best novelists... Atxaga is still the master of a complex story, told with deceptive simplicity -- Michael Eaude * Independent *

Author Bio

Bernardo Atxaga was born in Gipuzkoa in Spain in 1951 and lives in the Basque Country, writing in Basque and Spanish. He is a prizewinning novelist and poet, whose books, including Obabakoak and The Accordionist's Son, have won critical acclaim in Spain and abroad. His works have been translated into twenty-two languages. Margaret Jull Costa has been a literary translator from Spanish and Portugese for over twenty years, translating such writers as Jose Saramago, Eca de Queiroz, Luis Fernando Verissimo and Fernando Pessoa. Her work has brought her a number of prizes, the most recent of which was the 2010 Premio Valle-Inclan for Javier Marias' Your Face Tomorrow 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell.