“With this collection I hoped to depict aspects of my life in the form of stories: the childhood by the sea, the theatre, Indochina, marriage, illness and death, but also my fundamental joie de vivre and my faith in life.”
Pascale Roze
Pascale Roze gives us subtle variations on love through 18 short stories punctuated by one couple’s struggle with illness. Each story is an invitation to share a snapshot of life, some light-hearted, others more melancholic. Within these pages, the body dances but it also wearies, it is besotted, it quivers, despairs and remembers. We meet a man waiting for a heart transplant; a woman swimming across an ocean to win her freedom; a poet and a gentle seducer; a sphinx in a poplar tree; the grandson of an Emperor of Annam. We travel from Kuta to Cabourg, from the Mediterranean to the Alps, from Minsk to Paris. As one short story gives way to the next, a shimmering world unfurls through writing that tends towards a unifying harmony.
Pascale Roze won the 1996 Prix Goncourt with his first novel Le Chasseur Zéro. Her other works published by Stock are Un homme sans larmes (2005), L’eau rouge (2006), Itsik (2008) and Aujourd’hui les cœurs se desserrent (2011).
Pascale Roze propose de subtiles variations sur l’amour à travers dix-huit nouvelles rythmées par la lutte d’un couple contre la maladie. Le corps y danse autant qu’il s’épuise, s’éprend, vibre, se désespère, se souvient. On y découvre un homme en attente d’une greffe du coeur ; une femme nageant en plein océan pour gagner sa liberté ; un poète et un séducteur délicat ; un sphinx des peupliers ; le petit-fils d’un empereur d’Annam. Nouvelle après nouvelle, se déploie un monde chatoyant dont l’écriture s’attache à trouver l’harmonie.