And Their Children After Them - Softcover

Mathieu, Nicolas

 
9781892746771: And Their Children After Them
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1892746778 ISBN 13: 9781892746771
Verlag: OTHER PR LLC, 2020

Inhaltsangabe

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Times (UK) and the Los Angeles Public Library

Winner of the 2018 Goncourt Prize, this poignant coming-of-age tale captures the distinct feeling of summer in a region left behind by global progress.

August 1992. One afternoon during a heatwave in a desolate valley somewhere in eastern France, with its dormant blast furnaces and its lake, fourteen-year-old Anthony and his cousin decide to steal a canoe to explore the famous nude beach across the water. The trip ultimately takes Anthony to his first love and a summer that will determine everything that happens afterward.
 
Nicolas Mathieu conjures up a valley, an era, and the political journey of a young generation that has to forge its own path in a dying world. Four summers and four defining moments, from “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to the 1998 World Cup, encapsulate the hectic lives of the inhabitants of a France far removed from the centers of globalization, torn between decency and rage.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Nicolas Mathieu was born in Épinal, France, in 1978. His first novel, Aux animaux la guerre, was published in 2014 and adapted for television by Alain Tasma in 2018. He received the Goncourt Prize, France's most prestigious literary award, in 2018 for his second novel, And Their Children After Them. He lives in Nancy.

William Rodarmor has translated some forty-five books and screenplays in genres ranging from literary fiction to espionage and fantasy. His translations for Other Press include Article 353, by Tanguy Viel; The Blumkin Project, by Christian Salmon; The State of Israel vs. the Jews, by Sylvain Cypel; and And Their Children After Them, by Nicolas Mathieu, which won the 2021 Albertine translation prize.

Nicolas Mathieu was born in Épinal, France, in 1978. His first novel, Aux animaux la guerre, was published in 2014 and adapted for television by Alain Tasma in 2018. He received the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award, in 2018 for his second novel, And Their Children After Them. He lives in Nancy.

William Rodarmor is a former journalist who has translated some forty-five books and screenplays in genres ranging from literary fiction to espionage and fantasy. In 2017 he won the Northern California Book Award for fiction translation for The Slow Waltz of Turtles by Katherine Pancol. He lives in Berkeley, California.

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1

Anthony stood on the shore and stared.
With the sun directly overhead, the lake’s water looked as dense as oil. Every so often, the passage of a carp or a pike broke its velvety surface. The boy sniffed. The air was heavy with the smell of mud, of leaden, baked earth. July had scattered freckles across his already broad back. He was just wearing soccer shorts and a pair of fake Ray-Bans. It was hot as hell, but that didn’t explain everything.
Anthony had just turned fourteen. For a snack, he could devour an entire baguette with Vache qui Rit cheese. At night, wearing headphones, he sometimes wrote songs. His parents were jerks. When school started, he would be in ninth grade.
Lying next to him, his cousin was taking it easy. He was half asleep, stretched out on the nice towel they’d bought at the Calvi market the year they went to summer camp. Even lying down, he looked tall. Everyone thought he was at least twenty-two or-three. He used that assumption to get into places he shouldn’t. Bars, nightclubs, girls.
Anthony took a cigarette from the pack he’d slipped into his shorts and asked his cousin if he didn’t agree that they were bored out of their skulls.

His cousin didn’t stir. You could make out the exact outline of the muscles under his skin. From time to time a fly landed near the fold of his armpit. Then he would twitch, like a horse bothered by a horsefly. Anthony would’ve liked to be like that, slim, with well-defined abs. But he wasn’t the type. Despite doing push-ups and sit-ups in his bedroom every night, he remained square and massive, like a slab of beef. At school, one of the monitors once gave him some shit about a burst soccer ball. Anthony told him to meet him after class. The guy never showed up. Also, his cousin’s Ray-Bans were real.
Anthony lit his cigarette and sighed. The cousin knew perfectly well what he wanted. For days now, Anthony had been pestering him to go over to the “bare-ass” beach. They’d dubbed it that in an excess of optimism because you might see girls topless there, at the very least. Whatever the case, Anthony was completely obsessed.
“C’mon, let’s go there.” “Nah,” muttered his cousin. “C’mon. Please.”
“Not now. Just go for a swim.” “Yeah, sure . . .”
Anthony looked out at the water with his crooked eye. His right eyelid drooped lazily, and it threw his face off, making him look perpetually grumpy. One of those things that was out of whack. Like the heat enveloping him, like his taut, off-kilter body, his size ten feet, and the pimples sprouting all over on his face. Go for a swim, the cousin had said. What a laugh. Anthony spit between his teeth.
A year earlier, the Colin boy had drowned on July 14—Bastille Day, easy to remember. That night a crowd of people from the surrounding area had gathered on the lakeshore and in the woods to watch the fireworks. People lit campfires and barbecues. As usual, a fight broke out shortly after midnight. Guys on leave from the barracks went after the Arabs from the projects, and the Hennicourt inbreds waded in. Then the regular campers got involved, most of them young, but a few fathers, too, Belgians with big bellies and sunburns. Dawn revealed greasy paper, bloody sticks, broken bottles, even one of the sailing club’s Optimists stuck in a tree; not something you saw every day. The Colin boy, on the other hand, was nowhere to be found.
He’d definitely spent the evening at the lakeshore, though. That was known because he came with his pals, who all testified later. Ordinary kids with names like Arnaud, Alexandre, and Sébastien, who’d just passed their baccalauréat exam and didn’t even have driver’s licenses. They’d come to watch the usual fights without intending to get personally involved, except at one point they got caught up in the melee. After that, everything was kind of vague. Several witnesses said they’d seen a boy who’d seemed hurt. People mentioned a T-shirt covered with blood, and also a cut on his throat, like a mouth open over dark, liquid depths. In the confusion, nobody stepped forward to help him. Come morning, the Colin boy’s bed was empty.
The préfet ordered a search of the neighboring woods over the following days, while divers dragged the lake. For hours, onlookers watched as the firefighters’ orange Zodiac came and went. The divers tumbled backward out of it with a distant splash, and then you had to wait, in dead silence.
They said that the boy’s mother was in the hospital, on sedatives. Others that she’d hung herself. Or that she’d been seen wandering the streets in her nightgown. The boy’s father was a town cop, and he was also a hunter. Everyone naturally figured the Arabs had done the deed, so people kind of hoped for a settling of scores. He was the stocky guy who stayed aboard the firefighters’ boat, bareheaded in the blazing sun. People watched him from shore, watched his immobility, his unbearable calm, and his slowly ripening scalp. They found his patience disgusting, somehow. They would’ve liked him to do something, move at least, put on a cap.
What really upset people was the picture published in the newspaper later. In the photo, the Colin boy had a nice face, graceless and pale; a good face for a victim, actually. His hair was curly on the sides, his eyes were brown, and he was wearing a red T-shirt. The article said he had passed his baccalauréat exam with top honors. If you knew his family, that was quite an accomplishment. Just goes to show, said Anthony’s father.
In the end, the body was never found, and the Colin father went back to work without making a fuss. His wife hadn’t hung herself or anything. She just took pills.
Anyway, Anthony had no desire to go swimming. His cigarette hit the water’s surface with a little hiss. He looked up at the sky, then frowned, dazzled. For a fraction of a second, his eyelids were in balance. The sun was high; it must have been three o’clock. The cigarette left an unpleasant taste on his tongue. Time was dragging by, but at the same time the start of classes was approaching at top speed.
“Oh, fuck it,” said the cousin, standing up. “You’re such a drag.” “We’re bored, like big-time. Nothing to do, every day.”
“All right, then.”
His cousin draped his towel around his shoulders and climbed onto his mountain bike, ready to take off.
“C’mon, move your butt. We’re going over there.” “Where?”
“Move it, I said.”
Anthony jammed his towel into his old Chevignon backpack, retrieved his watch from a sneaker, and quickly got dressed. He’d barely gotten his BMX upright before his cousin disappeared down the road around the lake.
“Wait for me, for chrissakes!”
Ever since they were kids, Anthony had followed his cousin everywhere. Their mothers had been close as well, when they were younger. The Mougel girls, people called them. They’d been picking up the cutest boys at the canton’s dances for a long time before they eventually settled down with Mister Right. Helène, Anthony’s mother, chose one of the Casati sons. Irène did even worse. The Mougel girls, their men, cousins, and in-laws were all part of the same world, anyway. To see it in action, you could just check out the weddings, the funerals, and the Christmas festivities. The men said little and died young. The women dyed their hair and looked at life with gradually fading optimism. When they got old, they retained the memory of their men, beaten down on the job, at...

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Verlag
OTHER PR LLC
Erscheinungsdatum
2020
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1892746778
ISBN 13 
9781892746771
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
432
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