{"product_id":"henri-duchemin-and-his-shadows-isbn-9781590178324","title":"Henri Duchemin and His Shadows","description":"An NYRB Classics Original \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEmmanuel Bove was one of the most original writers  to come out of twentieth-century France and a popular  success in his day. Discovered by Colette, who arranged for the publication of his first novel, \u003ci\u003eMy Friends\u003c\/i\u003e, Bove enjoyed a busy literary career, until the German occupation silenced him. During his lifetime, his novels and stories were admired by Rilke, the surrealists, Camus, and Beckett, who said of him that “more than anyone else he has an instinct for the essential detail.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eHenry Duchemin and His Shadows\u003c\/i\u003e is the ideal introduction to Bove’s world, with its cast of stubborn isolatoes who call to mind Melville’s Bartleby, Walser’s “little men,” and Rhys’s lost women. Henri Duchemin, the protagonist of the collection’s first story, “Night Crime,” is ambivalent, afraid of appearing ridiculous, desperate for money: in other words, the perfect prey. Criminals, beautiful women, and profiteers threaten the sad young men of Bove’s stories, but worse yet are the interior voices and paranoia that propel them to their fates. The poet of the flophouse and the dive, the park bench and the pigeon’s crumb, Bove is also a deeply empathetic writer for whom no defeat is so great as to silence desire.\"Shadows and shadow selves do indeed pervade the six stories in this collection, brought together in English for the first time...each of [Bove’s] meticulously crafted stories discloses a quasi-surrealism with dashes of Poe, Kafka, and Dostoyevsky. Bove also shows himself a master of marginalization and fragmented relationships...An elegant translation of dark, brooding, and disturbing little narratives.” —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“One of the best novelists to emerge in France during the interwar years . . . a unique, powerful, and insightful stylist.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Review of Contemporary Fiction\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “The writing is so clear, so modest, and yet not at all modest. It’s a form of writing that doesn’t exist before him, nor since. It’s like drawing with very clear lines.” —Peter Handke\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The neat turns of Bove's stories make them engaging little reads...What makes the collection worthwhile is the writing, Bove's deft touch and turns of phrase consistently impressing. These are sad stories, but the craftsmanship behind them makes for considerable reading pleasure.” —M. A. Orthofer, \u003ci\u003eThe Complete Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eEmmanuel Bove\u003c\/b\u003e (1898–1945) was born Emmanuel Bobovnikoff to a Jewish émigré from Kiev and a Parisian chambermaid from Luxembourg. His childhood was spent in Paris, marked at times by extreme poverty in the company of his mother and younger brother, and wealth in the company of his father and stepmother. With his stepmother’s patronage, Bove acquired an education in Paris, Geneva, and, during the First World War, England. Back in Paris, he began writing while supporting himself with a series of odd jobs. He had been publishing popular novels under the pseudonym Jean Vallois for several years when Colette helped him publish the novel \u003ci\u003eMes amis\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eMy Friends\u003c\/i\u003e) under his own name. He continued publishing successful novels until the Second World War, at which time he was forced into exile in Algeria. He died of heart failure soon after his return to Paris.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eAlyson Waters\u003c\/b\u003e’s translations from the French include works by Louis Aragon, René Belletto, Eric Chevillard, and Albert Cossery. She is the 2012 winner of the French-American Translation Award for her translation of Chevillard’s \u003ci\u003ePrehistoric Times\u003c\/i\u003e. Waters has received a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, a PEN Translation Fund grant, and residency grants from the Centre National du Livre, the Villa Gillet, and the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. She teaches literary translation at New York University and Columbia University and is the managing editor of \u003ci\u003eYale French Studies\u003c\/i\u003e. She lives in Brooklyn.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eDonald Breckenridge\u003c\/b\u003e is the fiction editor of \u003ci\u003eThe Brooklyn Rail\u003c\/i\u003e, co-editor of \u003ci\u003eInTranslation\u003c\/i\u003e, managing editor of \u003ci\u003eRed Dust\u003c\/i\u003e, and the author of more than a dozen plays, a novella, and the novels \u003ci\u003e6\/2\/95\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eYou Are Here\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThis Young Girl Passing\u003c\/i\u003e. He lives in Brooklyn.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302325014757,"sku":"NP9781590178324","price":14.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590178324.jpg?v=1767728930","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/henri-duchemin-and-his-shadows-isbn-9781590178324","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}