2014 Grand Prix de l'imaginaire winners

The Grand Prix de l'imaginaire is the oldest French genre award still active.  Begun in 1974, it awards prizes in twelve categories, with these four likely being of most interest to readers here:  Best French Novel, Best Foreign Novel, Best French Short Fiction and Best Foreign Short Fiction.  The 2014 winners were recently announced (links to individual entries included in the copy/paste below):

1) Roman francophone

Anamnèse de Lady Star de L.L. Kloetzer (Denoël, Lunes d'Encre)

Chroniques des ombres de Pierre Bordage (Au Diable Vauvert)

Porcelaine - Légende du tigre et de la tisseuse d'Estelle Faye (Les Moutons électriques)

Même pas mort de Jean-Philippe Jaworski (Les Moutons électriques)

American gothic de Xavier Mauméjean (Alma)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Le Sang des 7 rois (tomes 1 & 2) de Régis Goddyn (L'Atalante)

Âmes de verre d'Anthelme Hauchecorne (Midgard)

Le Melkine (trilogie) d'Olivier Paquet (L'Atalante)

Martyrs d'Oliver Peru (J'ai lu)

Le Chevalier de Pierre Pevel (Bragelonne)

Point zéro d'Antoine Tracqui (Critic)

2) Roman étranger

L'Homme qui savait la langue des serpents d'Andrus Kivirähk (Le Tripode)

22/11/63 de Stephen King (Albin Michel)

Des larmes sous la pluie de Rosa Montero (Métailié)

Qui a peur de la mort ? de Nnedi Okorafor (Panini, Éclipse)

Les Insulaires de Christopher Priest (Denoël, Lunes d'Encre)

Alif l'invisible de G. Willow Wilson (Buchet-Chastel)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Le Dernier loup-garou de Glen Duncan (Denoël, Lunes d'Encre)

Maître de la matière d'Andreas Eschbach (L'Atalante)

Silo de Hugh Howey (Actes sud, Exofictions)

Le Calice du dragon de Lucius Shepard (Bélial')

3) Nouvelle francophone

7 secondes pour devenir un aigle (recueil) de Thomas Day (Bélial')

L'Enfant qui s'avance vers nous de Gulzar Joby (in Galaxies n°25)

Derrière les grilles du Luxembourg (recueil) de Pablo Mehler (Moires)

Cosplay de Michel Pagel (in Bifrost n°71)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

La Carte ou la Boussole de Philippe-Aubert Côté (in Solaris n°188)

Cuisine kitzyn de Philippe Curval (in Galaxies n°24)

L'Oiseau de fer de la rue Norman d'Esther Rochon (in Solaris n°186)

Trois relations de la fin de l'écrivain de Jean-Louis Trudel (in Utopiales 2013, ActuSF)

4) Nouvelle étrangère

Complications (recueil) de Nina Allan (Tristram)

Le Littéromancien, La Ménagerie de papier & Le Démon de Maxwell de Ken Liu (in Fiction n°16)

Live at Budokan d'Alastair Reynolds (in Bifrost n°69)

Je suis la Reine (recueil) d'Anna Starobinets (Mirobole)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Mono no aware de Ken Liu (in Galaxies n°25)

La Petite déesse (recueil) de Ian McDonald (Denoël, Lunes d'Encre)

Le Cru véritable d'Erzuine Thale de Robert Silverberg (in Chansons de la Terre mourante 1, ActuSF)

La Mort de monsieur Teodorescu de Cristian-Mihail Teodorescu (in Galaxies n°21)

5) Roman jeunesse francophone

Animale. La Malédiction de Boucle d'or de Victor Dixen (Gallimard Jeunesse)

Hantés d'Anne Fakhouri (Rageot)

Cœurs de Rouille de Justine Niogret (Le Pré aux clercs)

La Fille-sortilège de Marie Pavlenko (Le Pré aux clercs)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Double ennemi de Claude Ecken (Armada)

L'Horloge du temps perdu d'Anne Fakhouri (L'Atalante)

Le Septième sens de Patrick McSpare (Scrinéo)

Cantoria de Danielle Martinigol (L'Atalante)

Zoanthropes (tomes 1 & 2) de Matthias Rouage (Scrinéo)

Réseau(x) de Vincent Villeminot (Nathan)

6) Roman jeunesse étranger

Une Planète dans la tête de Sally Gardner (Gallimard Jeunesse)

Les Cités englouties de Paolo Bacigalupi (Au Diable vauvert)

Les Orphelins du royaume de Leigh Bardugo (Castelmore)

Cinder de Marissa Meyer (Pocket Jeunesse)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

L'Odyssée des mondes de Ian McDonald (Gallimard Jeunesse)

Le Monde merveilleux du caca de Bernard Pearson, Isobel Pearson & Terry Pratchett (L'Atalante)

Parallon (tomes 1 & 2) de Dee Shulman (Robert Laffont)

Les Déconnectés de Neal Shusterman (Le Masque)

La 5e vague de Rick Yancey (Robert Laffont)

7) Prix Jacques Chambon de la traduction

Bernard Sigaud pour Complications (recueil) de Nina Allan (Tristram)

Michelle Charrier pour Le Dernier loup-garou de Glen Duncan (Denoël, Lunes d'Encre)

Laure Manceau & Yoann Gentric pour Silo de Hugh Howey (Actes sud, Exofictions)

Jean-François Merle pour Le Mystère du hareng saur de Jasper Fforde (Fleuve Noir)

Jean-Pierre Minaudier pour L'Homme qui savait la langue des serpents d'Andrus Kivirähk (Attila)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Myriam Chirousse pour Des larmes sous la pluie de Rosa Montero (Métailié)

Olivier Debernard pour L'Étrange affaire de Spring Heeled Jack de Mark Hodder (Bragelonne)

Raphaëlle Pache pour Je suis la Reine (recueil) d'Anna Starobinets (Mirobole)

Anne-Sylvie Homassel pour Effroyabl ange1 de Iain M. Banks (L’Œil d’or)

8) Prix Wojtek Siudmak du graphisme

Didier Graffet pour Steampunk - De vapeur et d'acier avec Xavier Mauméjean (Le Pré aux clercs)

Nicolas Fructus pour Le Dernier château et autres crimes de Jack Vance (Bélial')

Joey Hi-Fi pour Qui a peur de la mort ? de Nnedi Okorafor (Panini, Éclipse)

Aurélien Police pour Bifrost n°72 (Bélial')

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Mathieu Lauffray pour Axis Mundi (CFSL Ink)

Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme pour Dernière semaine d'un reptile de Franck Ferric (Riez) et Stalkerd'Arcadi et Boris Strougatski (Folio SF)

Ronan Toulhoat pour Gueule de truie de Justine Niogret (Critic)

9) BD / Comics

Souvenirs de l'empire de l'atome d'Alexandre Clerisse et Thierry Smolderen (Dargaud)

Aâma (tomes 1 à 3) de Frederik Peeters (Gallimard)

Le Jeune Lovecraft de José Oliver et Bartolo Torres (Diábolo)

Punk Rock Jesus de Sean Murphy (Urban)

Urban (tome 1 & 2) de Luc Brunschwig et Roberto Ricci (Futuropolis)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Alisik (tome 1) de Humertus Rufledt et Helge Vogt (Le Lombard)

Chaos Team (tomes 1.1 et 1.2) de Vincent Brugeas et Ronan Toulhoat (Akileos)

Les Dormants de Jonathan Munoz (Cleopas)

L'Entrevue de Manuele Fior (Futuropolis)

Funérailles (Freaks' Squeele) (tome 1) de Florent Maudoux (Ankama)

Isabellae (tomes 1 & 2) de Gabor et Raule (Le Lombard)

La Voie du sabre (tome 1) de Federico Ferniani et Mathieu Mariolle (Glénat)

10) Manga

The Arms Peddler (tomes 1 à 6) de Kyoichi Nanatsuki et Night Owl (Ki-oon)

Assassination Classroom (tomes 1 & 2) de Yusei Matsui (Kana)

Les Enfants de la mer (tomes 1 à 5) de Daisuke Igarashi (Sarbacane)

Mokke (tomes 1 à 3) de Takatoshi Kumakura (Pika)

Scumbag Loser (tomes 1 & 2) de Mikoto Yamaguchi (Ki-oon)

Terra Formars (tomes 1 à 4) de Yu Sasuga et Kenichi Tachibana (Kazé)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Antimagia (tomes 1 & 2) de Kyû Aika (Doki-Doki)

City Hall (tomes 1 à 4) de Rémy Guerin et Guillaume Lapeyre (Ankama)

Iris Zero (tomes 1 à 5) de Takana Hotaru et Chiki Piro (Doki-Doki)

Rex Fabula (tomes 1 à 3) de Kairi Fujiyama (Doki-Doki)

Spice & Wolf (tomes 1 à 8) de Juu Ayakura, Isuna Hasekura et Keito Koume (Ototo)

Warlord (tomes 1 à 5) de Byung Jin Kim et Sung Jae Kim (Ki-oon)

11) Essai

Souvenirs du futur. Les Miroirs de la Maison d'Ailleurs sous la direction de Marc Atallah,Frédéric Jaccaud et Francis Valéry (Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes)

La revue en ligne Res Futurae

100 ans et plus de cinéma fantastique et de science-fiction de Jean-Pierre Andrevon (Rouge Profond)

Planètes pilleuses et autres thématiques de la science-fiction de Jean-Pierre Laigle (L'Œil du Sphinx)

Le Savant fou sous la direction de Hélène Machinal (Presses Universitaires de Rennes)

12) Prix spécial

L'édition synchrone de L'Intégrale Stefan Wul chez Bragelonne et des Univers de Stefan Wul chez Ankama, adaptations des romans en BD par D. Cassegrain, M. Hawthorne, D. Lapiere, J.-D. Morvan, M. Reynes, O. Vatine, Yann...

Four Color Fear, comics d'horreur des années 50 (Diábolo)

Odyssées, l'Intégrale des nouvelles de Arthur C. Clarke (Bragelonne)

Steampunk - De vapeur et d'acier de Didier Graffet et Xavier Mauméjean (Le Pré aux clercs)

Un an dans les airs, de Raphaël Albert, Jeanne-A Debats, Raphaël Granier de Cassagnac, Johan Heliot & Nicolas Fructus (Mnémos)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

L'Intégrale d'Imaro de Charles R. Saunders (Mnémos)

L'Intégrale Spirou par Rob-Vel (Dupuis)

Graphic, non-English, Marxist, Poetic Book Porn

The Serbian editions for Danilo Kiš's Garden, Ashes and Milorad Pavić's Dictionary of the Khazars

Latin translation of The Hobbit and Tolkien's prose translation of Beowulf

Two verse translations of Beowulf, by E.M. Liuzza and Frederick Rebsamen

Two Prix Goncourt winners:  Jonathan Littell, Les Bienveillantes (available in English as The Kindly Ones) and Laurent Gaudé's Le Soleil des Scorta (The House of Scorta)

Cameroonese writer Patrice Nganang's Temps de chien (Dog Days in English) and the German edition of Thomas Mann's Tonio Kröger and Mario und der Zauberer (Mario and the Magician)

Nick Mamatas, Love is the Law and the Library of America edition of three books by Thornton Wilder

The first two volumes, in English translation, of Joann Sfar's The Rabbi's Cat

In addition, here are listings of recent e-books that I've bought in May:

Emma Donoghue, Frog Music

David James Poissant, The Heaven of Animals

Rivka Galchen, American Innovations

Rene Denfeld, The Enchanted

Ahmadou Kourouma, Allah is not Obliged

Smith Henderson, Fourth of July Creek

Porochista Khakpour, The Last Illusion

Felix Gilman, The Revolutions

Roland Dorgelès, Les Croix de bois

John-Antoine Nau, Force ennemie

Émile Moselly, Terres Lorraines

Marc Elder, Le Peuple de la Mer

Pierre Lemaitre, Au revoir là-haut

Alexis Jenni, L'art français de la guerre

Pascal Quignard, Les Ombres errantes

Gilles Leroy, Alabama Song

Atiq Rahimi, Syngué sabour:  Pierre de patience

Jean Echenoz, Je M'en Vais

Jean Echenoz, 14

Giorgio Pressburger, Storia Umana e Inumana

Francesco Pecoraro, La vita in tempo di pace

Antonio Scurati, Il padre infedele

Umberto Eco, Come si fa una tesi di Laurea

Marco Magini, Come fossi solo

Elisa Ruotolo, Ovunque, proteggici

Donatella di Pietrantonio, Bella Mia

Edmundo Paz Soldán, Iris

Jeff VanderMeer, Aniquilación

Valter Hugo Mãe, O Filho do Mil Homens

José Luiz Passos, O sonâmbulo amador

Ana Luisa Amaral, Inversos

Daša Drndić, April u Berlinu

Herta Müller, La Bestia del Cor

Ben Marcus, Leaving the Sea

It is difficult for me to put in words what exactly it is about Ben Marcus's stories that appeal to me.  At first, I want to say it is the weirdness of many of his settings, but that is too vague and liable to be misconstrued.  Perhaps it is the family dynamics in several of his tales.  Certainly, passages like this one, from the first story of his latest collection, Leaving the Sea, "What Have You Done?", do contain a sharp, incisive wit:

In the car they didn't ask him about his trip and he didn't volunteer.  His sister and Rick whispered and cuddled and seemed to try to inseminate each other facially in the backseat while his father steered the car onto the expressway.  Alicia and Rick had their whole married lives to exchange fluids and language, but for some reason they'd needed to wait until Paul was there to demonstrate how clandestine and porno they were.  They had big secrets – as securely employed adults very well might.  Plus they wanted Paul to know that they were vibrantly glistening sexual human beings, even in their late thirties, when most people's genitals turn dark and small, like shrunken heads, and airport trip be damned, because they couldn't just turn off their desire at will. 

Alone they probably hated each other, Paul thought.  Masturbating in separate rooms, then reading in bed together on his-and-hers Kindles.  Ignoring the middle-aged fumes steaming under the duvet.  Just another marriage burning through its eleventh year.  What's the anniversary stone for eleven years of marriage?  A pebble?

As well executed as "What Have You Done?" is in terms of exploring family dynamics and hidden secrets, Leaving the Sea is not a monolithic collection that continuously strums three chords AC/DC-style.  There are variations on theme, such as that introduced in the beginning of the second story, "I Can Say Many Nice Things":

A welcome packet, the literary genre most likely to succeed in the new millennium.  Why not read about a community you don't belong to, that doesn't actually exit, a captain and crew who are, in reality, if that isn't too much of a downer on your vacation, as indifferent to each other as the coworkers at an office or bank?  Read doctored personal statements from underpaid crew members – because ocean life pays better than money! – who hate their lives but have been forced to buy into the mythology of working on a boat, not a goddamned ship, separated now from loved ones and friends, growing lonelier by the second, even while they wait on you and follow your every order. 

And yet, when Fleming thought about it, this welcome packet, fucked up though it was, even though he hadn't read it, most certainly had more readers than he did.  More people, for sure, read this welcome packet than had ever read any of his books or stories.  This welcome packet commanded a bigger audience, had more draw, appealed to more people, and, the kicker, understood its cherished readers better than he ever would with his sober, sentimental inventions of domestic lives he'd never lived, unless that was too flattering a description of the literary product he willed onto the page with less and less conviction every time he sat down at his laptop.

Certainly there is an air of self-reflection and cynical loathing present, but there also is the sense of a narrator who is blinded to many facets of reality and yet presumes at times to believe that he is self-aware.  This is not a cheery tale, but certainly it is a penetrating one that forces its readers to consider certain things about their own attitudes toward life and their perceptions of the people around them.

However, there is still more to Leaving the Sea.  In the second section (out of three), the first tale, "On Not Growing Up," differs in its structure (presented as a fictional Q&A session) and in its inversion of societal beliefs.  This line taken from it particularly appeals to me:

My ethics?  I'd like to shed the strictures of adulthood and make maturity an optional result of a freely lived human life, not the necessary path to power and success, lorded over by depressed, overweight, unimaginative corpses.

Yet despite how many pithy quotes I can find in Leaving the Sea and no matter how many references to families, dysfunctional relationships, and to failed careers, this collection is not defined solely by Marcus's excellent treatment of those themes.  No, his prose sparkles throughout, almost never ringing a false note.  The various characters that people his stories, while they have certain features in common, never feel stale or redundant.  Leaving the Sea is one of those rare collections in which readers can detect faint echoes of previous stories, but these echoes do not drown out the interesting things Marcus achieves in each individual tale.  This is certainly one of the better story collections that I have read this year.  Highly recommended.

World Cup of Fiction Preview: Group B

Click here for description of the 2014 groupings and the Group A preview.

Like Group A, the Group B countries contain a mixture of young and established literary traditions.  Yet with the possible exception of Spain, this group is perhaps more evenly matched than the first group, as there are not as many standouts for any of the participant countries.  In saying this, I am not alluding to actual literary quality or output as much as I am to international exposure, especially in the Anglophone nations.  Certainly there are several critically and popularly-acclaimed writers from these countries, some of which have received recent international acclaim, and in a matchup of individual writers, there is a very real chance of a national literary upset.

Australia 

The Socceroos have long been overshadowed by their larger, older Anglo-American kin, but those who are tempted to look at Australia's relative sparse population density and conclude that this young nation has not produced many world-class fiction writers over the past century will find themselves greatly mistaken.  Writers such as the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Patrick White, two-time Booker Prize winner Peter Carey, Colleen McCullough, and Nevil Shute (whose On the Beach was a staple of many Anglo-American school reading lists during the Cold War) certainly make Australia a literary power worthy of respect.  However, the Australian side might be a bit weak when it comes to poetry or to the lack of visible aboriginal or immigrant writing voices.

Chile

La Roja may be less familiar to football/literary enthusiasts than the other "roja" in Group B, but lately there have been some excellent Chilean writers who have made literary waves outside South America.  The most visible of these young writers, Roberto Bolaño, spent most of his adult life living outside Chile, but certainly his writing has struck a chord with writers who grew up during the days of Pinochet's rule.  Alberto Fuguet, whether one considers him as a writer or a film writer, certainly has been an influential Latin American voice over the past twenty years.  But before Fuguet helped co-found the McOndo anthology/erstwhile literary movement, Chile had produced several outstanding poets:  Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, and Nicanor Parra being just the most visible of a century-spanning crop of talented poets.  If the outcomes were based on poetry comparisons, then Chile might be a slight favorite in the majority of the contests.

The Netherlands 

The Clockwork Orange may not have been the host country for Anthony Burgess's famous novel of that name, but certainly the Dutch have developed a reputation in recent years for precise yet harrowing literature.  Although long overshadowed by their Teutonic neighbors, the Dutch literary side have produced a trio of recent literary stars, Harry Mulisch, Tommy Wieringa, and Gerbrand Bakker, the latter of whom won an IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.  Despite the talents of these three novelists, the Dutch are not as well-known in international circles for their prose or their poetry, so they likely will be the underdogs in any literary matchup.

Spain

La Furia Roja, the Red Fury, certainly has a catchy ring to it.  The defending FIFA World Cup Champions certainly can field a very solid, wide-ranging literary side as well.  Whether one prefers medieval epic poems like Mio Cid or early modern masterworks like Cervantes's Don Quijote or Lope de Vega's poetry and plays, or perhaps the early 20th century writer Miguel Unamuno, a member of the "Generation of '98," or more recently, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Spanish literature is rich in its diverse forms and interesting authorial personalities.  Yet with the exception of Zafón, few Spanish writers have managed to make a literary splash in the early 21st century (I leave Bolaño out of this, as although he had Spanish residency for nearly two decades before his death, he was as much a Chilean as a Spanish immigrant), so if the literary comparisons were to switch to the past decade's production, the Spanish literary side might be at a disadvantage.  However, when the entire national literary output is considered, Spain might be the slight literary favorite out of this group.

A quote from Tolkien's translation of Beowulf

I've been reading J.R.R. Tolkien's just-published prose translation of Beowulf for the past few days, alternating between that and the bilingual verse translation done by Seamus Heaney.  While I recognize that Tolkien's prose translation was more of a "working notes" edition that perhaps could have been polished a bit more (and sadly, a direct verse translation, incomplete as it was, was not included in this book), there certainly are passages that have charmed me, such as this one:

The flame flashed forth, light there blazed within, even as of heaven radiantly shines the candle of the sky.  He gazed about that house, then turning went along the wall, grasping upraised that hard weapon by the hilt, in ire undaunted the knight of Hygelac.  That blade the warrior bold did not despise; nay, he thought now swiftly to requite Grendel for those many dire assaults that he had made upon the Western Danes, far oftener than that one last time, slaying in slumber the companions of Hrothgar's hearth, devouring as they slept fifteen of the people of the Danes, and others as many bearing forth away, a plunder hideous.  For that he had given him his reward, that champion in his wrath, so that on his couch he saw now Grendel lying weary of war, bereft of life, such hurt had he erewhile in battle got at Heorot.  Far asunder sprang the corpse, when Grendel in death endured a stroke of hard sword fiercely swung; his head was cloven from him. (pp. 58-59)

For comparison's sake, here's Heaney's verse translation of the same part:

A light appeared and the place brightened
the way the sky does when heaven's candle
is shining clearly.  He inspected the vault:
with sword held high, its hilt raised
to guard and threaten, Hygelac's thane
scouted by the wall in Grendel's wake.
Now the weapon was to prove its worth.
The warrior determined to take revenge
for every gross act Grendel had committed –
and not only for that one occasion
when he'd come to slaughter the sleeping troops,
fifteen of Hrothgar's house-guards
surprised on their benches and ruthlessly devoured,
and as many again carried away,
a brutal plunder.  Beowulf in his fury
now settled that score:  he saw the monster
in his resting place, war-weary and wrecked,
a lifeless corpse, a casualty
of the battle in Heorot.  The body gaped
at the stroke dealt to it after death:
Beowulf cut the corpse's head off.
(lines 1570-1590, p. 109)

I'll leave it up to you to decide which version appeals to you most.

I confess: I really know little and understand even less

Saw an interesting New York Times article linked today on Facebook.  Entitled "Faking Cultural Literacy," it deals with issues related to "real-time, real news" cycles in which people are inundated with events, expecting to form opinions even when "real" information is scarce or even nonexistent.  Although I do not agree 100% with its points, I am at least sympathetic with them, as they do strike close to the heart of some musings that I have had over the past several weeks.  What I think I've concluded, at least for know, is that I really know little and understand even less.

This may sound like a counter-intuitive thesis, considering that as an occasional reviewer and teacher, I might be expected to know something about which I fold forth.  However, the older I've become and the more experiences I've had with people from all walks of life (or is it just several walks of life, with several multitudes awaiting to be discovered or, worse, ignored?), the more I've become convinced that I too easily become convinced sometime.  Maybe it's jumping to a conclusion and making comments that hurt another, before hearing their side or learning new information that would lead me to disown those previously-made comments and assumptions.  Or maybe I want to believe in something just hard enough that "evidence" is shifted to support that stance without any further consideration.

Regardless of how it happens, what too frequently happens is that I convince myself that my knowledge and my opinions matter.  To whom it matters is irrelevant.  I am a "decider," someone who proclaims his thoughts on literary genres, politicians, social movements, justice, prejudices, sports teams, and favorite squirrels.  But do I really know anything about what I say?

I am beginning to think "no," that I really don't.  I see evidence of this in listening to others talk about things in ways that I didn't even fathom beforehand.  I see it in my struggles to articulate opinions.  I see it in those moments where it is better to just be silent and to consider what is unfolding around me.  So yes, considering the hugeness of human knowledge and dialogues, I really do know little and understand even less.

But that doesn't mean that I can try harder to understand something or another just a little bit more.

Here are the first three paragraphs to a new book. Would these captivate you?

I just started reading Porochista Khakpour's recently-released second novel (and one based on Persian legend), The Last Illusion, when I read these first three paragraphs:

Exactly once upon a time in a small village in northern Iran, a child of the wrong color was born. 

Khanoom (the Persian word for "lady," what everyone knew his mother as) was forty-seven when she gave birth to the boy.  He was the last child of eight, his closest sibling nineteen years older and all grown.  He had been a mistake from the beginning – sex being Khanoom's least visited whim – a cursed gift from her husband as he lay on his deathbed. 

Nobody imagined a dying man could produce the seed of another child, and yet.  But a child like that, sure – there should have been a cautionary tale about it, a proverb at the very least.  When Khanoom had him, months after her husband was dead, she looked at that sick yellow-white thing in her arms, and the only thing that made sense was to blame the child's problems on the diseased seed.  This tiny silently crying baby – his crying made no sound, which made her suspect he was mute – was clearly not well, having come from a half most unwell.  His hair and skin were the color of – no use to sugarcoat it, Khanoom would snap – piss.  He was something so unlike them, unlike all of nature.  It made her miss her dead husband less, the memory of that final hard explosive orgasm she recalled – an ejaculation that she imagined like a hot toxic pus, a poison that would have spawned an even more unthinkable demon, had it not been for Khanoom's own khanoomly egg.  It gave Khanoom nightmares to hold the boy even, no matter what the cousins and neighbors who visited said, trying their best to make the best of it.

Knowing beforehand that this is a modern take on a millennia-old Persian poem on a legendary fighter, what struck me was Khakpour's use of digressions to stretch out the "problem" of her newborn son, as it made me more curious about the events leading up to his untimely birth than I otherwise would have been if she had written this in a more straightforward fashion.

Way too early to tell if The Last Illusion will live up to the promise of its blurb (I had singled this out for future purchase back in January due to a brief description on The Millions), but it certainly is off to a promising start.  But what about you?  Would this sort of writing appeal to you or would it leave you feeling indifferent or even disinclined to read it?

List of Prix Goncourt winners

Since I'm working on my French reading comprehension, I thought I'd add a list of Prix Goncourt winners here so I can keep track of those winning books that I do end up reading over the next several weeks, months, and years.  Bolded titles for ones read, italics for those bought but not yet read, and plain text for those not yet read/bought.  Due to the way I copy/pasted the only non-hypertext list I could find, the titles come second, followed by the author's name.

1903	Force ennemie	John-Antoine Nau
1904	La Maternelle	Léon Frapié
1905	Les Civilisés	Claude Farrère
1906	Dingley, l’illustre écrivain	Jérôme and Jean Tharaud
1907	Terres lorraines	Emile Moselly
1908	Ecrit sur l’eau	Francis de Miomandre
1909	En France	Marius-Ary Leblond
1910	De Goupil à Margot	Louis Pergaud
1911	Monsieur des Lourdines	Alphonse de Chateaubriant
1912	Les Filles de la pluie	André Savignon
1913	Le Peuple de la mer	Marc Elder
1914	L’Appel du sol	Adrien Bertrand
1915	Gaspard	René Benjamin
1916	Le Feu	Henri Barbusse
1917	La Flamme au poing	Henri Malherbe
1918	Civilisation	Georges Duhamel
1919	A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleur	Marcel Proust
1920	Nene	Ernest Pérochon
1921	Batouala	René Maran
1922	Le Vitriol de la lune; Le Martyre de l’obèse	Henri Béraud
1923	Rabevel; ou, le mal des ardents	Lucien Fabre
1924	Le Chèvrefeuille; Le Purgatoire; Le Chapitre treize d’Athénée	Thierry Sandre
1925	Raboliot	Maurice Genevoix
1926	Le Supplice de Phèdre	Henry Deberly
1927	Jérôme, 60° latitude nord	Maurice Bedel
1928	Un Homme se penche sur son passé	Maurice Constantin-Weyer
1929	L’Ordre	Marcel Arland
1930	Malaisie	Henri Fauconnier
1931	Mal d’amour	Jean Fayard
1932	Les Loups	Guy Mazeline
1933	La Condition humaine	André Malraux
1934	Capitaine Conan	Roger Vercel
1935	Sang et lumières	Joseph Peyré
1936	L’Empreinte de Dieu	Maxence van der Meersch
1937	Faux passeports	Charles Plisnier
1938	L’Araigne	Henri Troyat
1939	Les Enfants gâtés	Philippe Hériat
1940	Les Grandes Vacances	Francis Ambrière
1941	Vent de Mars	Henri Pourrat
1942	Pareil à des enfants	Bernard Marc
1943	Passage de l’homme	Marius Grout
1944	Le Premier Accroc coûte 200 francs	Elsa Triolet
1945	Mon village à l’heure allemande	Jean-Louis Bory
1946	Histoire d’un fait divers	Jean-Jacques Gautier
1947	Les Forêts de la nuit	Jean-Louis Curtis
1948	Les Grandes Familles	Maurice Druon
1949	Week-end à Zuydcoote	Robert Merle
1950	Les Jeux sauvages	Paul Colin
1951	Le Rivage des Syrtes	Julien Gracq (declined)
1952	Léon Morin, prêtre	Béatrice Beck
1953	Les Bêtes; Le Temps des morts	Pierre Gascar
1954	Mandarins	Simone de Beauvoir
1955	Les Eaux mêlées	Roger Ikor
1956	Les Racines du ciel	Romain Gary
1957	La Loi	Roger Vailland
1958	Saint Germain; ou, la négociation	Francis Walder
1959	Le Dernier des justes	André Schwartz-Bart
1960	Dieu est né en exil	Vintila Horia
1961	La Pitié de Dieu	Jean Cau
1962	Les Bagages de sable	Anna Langfus
1963	Quand la mer se retire	Armand Lanoux
1964	L’État sauvage	Georges Conchon
1965	L’Adoration	Jacques Borel
1966	Oublier Palerme	Edmonde Charles-Roux
1967	La Marge	André Pieyre de Mandiargues
1968	Les Fruits de l’hiver	Bernard Clavel
1969	Creezy	Félicien Marceau
1970	Le Roi des Aulnes	Michel Tournier
1971	Les Bêtises	Jacques Laurent
1972	L’Épervier de Maheux	Jean Carrière
1973	L’Ogre	Jacques Chessex
1974	La Dentellière	Pascal Lainé
1975	La Vie devant soi	Emile Ajar (declined)
1976	Les Flamboyants	Patrick Grainville
1977	John l’enfer	Didier Decoin
1978	Rue des boutiques obscures	Patrick Modiano
1979	Pélagie-la-charrette	Antonine Maillet
1980	Le Jardin d’acclimatation	Yves Navarre
1981	Anne Marie	Lucien Bodard
1982	Dans la main de l’ange	Dominique Fernandez
1983	Les Égarés	Frédérick Tristan
1984	L’Amant	Marguerite Duras
1985	Les Noces barbares	Yann Queffélec
1986	Valet de nuit	Michel Host
1987	La Nuit sacrée (read in English)	Tahar Ben Jelloun
1988	L’Exposition coloniale	Erik Orsenna
1989	Un Grand Pas vers le Bon Dieu	Jean Vautrin
1990	Les Champs d’honneur	Jean Rouaud
1991	Les Filles du calvaire	Pierre Combescot
1992	Texaco	Patrick Chamoiseau
1993	La Rocher de Tanios	Amin Maalouf
1994	Un Aller simple	Didier van Cauwelaert
1995	Le Testament français	Andreï Makine
1996	Le Chasseur zéro	Pascale Roze
1997	La Bataille	Patrick Rambaud
1998	Confidence pour confidence	Paule Constant
1999	Je m’en vais	Jean Echenoz
2000	Ingrid Caven	Jean-Jacques Schuhl
2001	Rouge Brésil	Jean-Christophe Rufin
2002	Les Ombres errantes	Pascal Quignard
2003	La Maîtresse de Brecht	Jacques-Pierre Amette
2004	Le Soleil des Scorta	Laurent Gaudé
2005	Trois jours chez ma mère	François Weyergans
2006	Les Bienveillantes (read in English)	Jonathan Littell
2007	Alabama Song	Gilles Leroy
2008	Syngué sabour: pierre de patience	Atiq Rahimi
2009	Trois femmes puissantes (also read in English)	Marie NDiaye
2010	La Carte et le territoire (read in English)	Michel Houellebecq
2011	L’Art français de la guerre	Alexis Jenni
2012	Le Sermon sur la chute de Rome	Jérôme Ferrari
2013	Au revoir là-haut	Pierre Lemaitre