The Round and Other Cold Hard Facts by J. M. G. Le Clezio, C. Dickson (Translator)

Product Details

Synopsis

Set largely in locations near the French Riviera, these eleven short stories depict the harsh realities of life for the less-privileged inhabitants of this very privileged region. Distinguished French writer J. M. G. Le Clézio lends his voice to the dispossessed and explores his familiar themes of alienation, immigration, poverty, violence, indifference, the loss of beauty, and the betrayal of innocence.

In one story an adolescent girl encounters the violence of a gang of masked bikers in a hostile and desolate housing project. In others a man stands by helplessly as a place of great beauty and deep childhood memory is slowly consumed and destroyed by a quickly developing city, an illegal immigrant desperate for work finds himself the prisoner of a ring trafficking in human beings, and two girls risk everything by running away from home and their dead-end factory jobs in search of a more meaningful life. At once tragic and evocative, these engrossing and beautifully crafted stories touch upon the loss of human values in a rapidly changing world.

Kirkus Reviews

The other side of life on the French Riviera, as seen with understated compassion and intensity in this previously untranslated 1982 collection of thematically related-and brilliantly written-stories. French New Wave veteran Le Clézio is best known for such knotty postmodern texts as his prizewinning first novel, The Interrogation (1960)-and insufficiently recognized for his more conventionally realistic fiction, of which these 11 tales are memorable examples. They illuminate a world of the underprivileged and outcast, where teenaged girls combat boredom by joining motorcycle gangs (in the title story), or become victims of their impulses toward adventure ("Ariadne"); or, in the ironically titled "The Great Life," embark on a spree of petty crime while pursuing dreams of escape from moribund housing projects and soul-numbing jobs ("It was as if they were on the other side of the world . . . [or] lost thousands of miles away, deep in outer space." Other vagrant protagonists include an escaped prisoner lulled into carelessness by the pristine beauty of a "mountain wilderness" ("The Escape"); a bereft lover who "haunts" the scene of his girlfriend's death in a car accident ("Anne's Game"); and a nine-year-old schoolboy ("David"), whose failed attempt to run away from home like his older brother before him suggests that we're watching the birth of an adult criminal. The disparity between a shimmering landscape's romantic promise and the grim realities of ordinary lives is powerfully etched in a little girl's fearful observation of a demolition crew at work ("Yondaland") and an adult observer's bitter memories of a wealthy neighbor's lavish "Villa Aurora" as it was during his youth and as itis under the pressure of urban renewal and inevitable change. And in the chilling little masterpiece "Moloch," poverty is unsparingly incarnated in the figures of a despairing pregnant woman and a silent, menacing "wolf"-like dog. A fascinating tour of the wild side, conducted by a writer who has been surprising us for over forty years.

Biography

Winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature, J. M. G. Le Clézio was born in Nice in 1940 and is one of France’s best-known contemporary writers. He has published more than thirty novels and nonfiction works. In the course of the last four decades Le Clézio has won numerous prizes, including the Prix Renaudot for his first novel. His works have been translated into many languages.

C. Dickson is a translator living in France. Her translations include Shams Nadir's The Astrolabe of the Sea and Mohammad Dib's The Savage Night (Nebraska 2001).