Alex Preston
Pain & Abel
The Erl-King
By Michel Tournier (Translated by Barbara Bray)
Atlantic Books 329pp £12.99
Recently I interviewed Tristan Garcia, one of France’s most vaunted young novelists, and mentioned that I’d been teaching Michel Tournier’s The Erl-King. His eyes took on sudden light and we spent the next ten minutes vying with each other in our praise of Tournier and of this delicious, dense, batty novel. Neither of us, perhaps, went as far as the New Yorker, which in 1972 described The Erl-King as ‘the most important book to come out of France since Proust’. And yet we marvelled that a masterpiece such as this could have sunk, alongside its author, almost without trace. Now The Erl-King has been reissued in the hope that new readers might come to its many wonders and lose themselves in the labyrinthine mind of its hero, Abel Tiffauges.
When Le Roi des aulnes appeared in 1970, the 48-year-old Tournier had just quit his job as editor-in-chief of the publishing company Plon. His first novel, Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique, had been a hit both at home and abroad, winning the Grand Prix du Roman of the Académie
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk