The Queen's Caprice
Stories
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Seven short stories by the Prix Goncourt winner—"the most distinctive voice of his generation . . . master magician of the contemporary French novel" (The Washington Post).
France's preeminent fiction writer, Jean Echenoz is celebrated for his ability to craft stories with such precision that readers are caught off guard by the intense emotion and imagination just beneath the placid surface of his writing. As Gary Indiana put it in his essay "Conjuror of St. Germain", "Echenoz risks everything in his fiction, gambling on the prodigious blandishments of his voice to lure his readers into a maze of improbabilities and preposterous happenings."
The Queen's Caprice—seven stories available in English for the first time—reveals Echenoz at the height of his talents, taking readers on a journey across radically different landscapes. The title story explores a tiny corner of the French countryside; "Nelson" offers a brilliant miniaturist portrait of the hero of the Battle of Trafalgar; "In Babylon" sketches the ancient city of Mesopotamia, based on trace descriptions from Herodotus; and other stories visit the forests of England, the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, Tampa Bay, and the interior of a submarine. Amid the thrill and allure of this voyage of words, "again and again we pause to savor the richness of Echenoz's startling, crystalline observations" (Lydia Davis).
"[A] terrific sense of humor tinged with existential mischief." —L'Express
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Echenoz (Big Blondes) offers seven little literary objects": elegant, succinct narratives that question, mock, and undermine narrative convention. The first piece portrays English hero Admiral Nelson, prone to seasickness ( so awkward for a sailor"), eating with one hand and reading sideways with his one good eye. As Nelson plants acorns for oaks to build future ships, the narrator mentions that oak is also used in barrels like the one that will carry Nelson's body home from Trafalgar. The title story consists entirely of a description of a French country landscape, the travelogue of a casual expert editing his not-quite-final draft, simultaneously quoting and ignoring Joseph Conrad's plea for orderly exposition. The travel-writer protagonist of In Babylon" is the Greek historian Herodotus, whose remarks on the ancient city, filled with exaggerations, misinterpretations, and straight-out fiction, will be read for centuries. Other pieces depict statues in the Luxembourg gardens and a writer's attempt to write about a Paris suburb. The story with the most clearly articulated plot, about a French engineer visiting Florida, features an abridged history of bridge building. Cinematic underwater sci-fi fantasy rounds out the collection. Coverdale's ingenious translation, with endnotes on linguistic idiosyncrasies and cultural references, brings to life Echenoz's minimalist precision, ironic humor, and savvy choice of detail.
