Description
The eagerly awaited English translation of Kaddour's award-winning novel of clashing cultures during the French colonial years Gather together French colonialists, young nationalists eager for independence, and local Maghreb leaders in a small North African city of the 1920s. Bring a collection of brash American filmmakers and celebrities into the picture. Dangerous cultural collisions are the inevitable result in Hédi Kaddour's best-selling novel of French colonial rule and its persisting legacy of human chaos and cultural tragedy. In this commanding novel, the author plumbs the contradictions of colonialism and the impact on individual lives. With insight, humor, and a profound sense of irony he introduces Les Prépondérants--"The Preponderants," an unofficial group of peddlers of influence who operate at every level of colonial society. American "Hollywood" values, Islamic and secular politics, French manners--none of them escapes Kaddour's skewering wit. Filled with rich irony and wonderful characters, this is a novel that grapples forcefully with colonial relations in the Arabic, North African, and French worlds, while also journeying into the simmering Europe and United States of the Roaring Twenties.
About the Author
Hédi Kaddour was born of a Tunisian father and a French mother. Received 1st at the aggregation of modern letters, he is a translator of English, German and Arabic. He taught French literature and dramaturgy at the École normale supérieure de Lyon (ex ENS de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud) and journalistic writing at the Centre de formation des journalistes [fr] (CFJ). He is now a professor of French literature at the New York University in France. He also teaches the writing of reports at the École des métiers de l'information (EMI, Paris) and runs one of the writing workshops of the "NRF" at Éditions Gallimard.Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Po&Sie , he sometimes gives literary columns to Le Monde des livres, Libération and Le Magazine Littéraire.After several collections of poems published by Editions Gallimard, he published Waltenberg [fr] in 2005, a novel that plunges into the history of men and letters of the twentieth century. This book, which mixes adventure and espionage, also houses a sentimental plot tinged with melancholy. Hailed by critics, it received the prix Goncourt du premier roman and the prix du premier roman, and was ranked "Best French novel of the year 2005" by magazine Lire.A collection of studies on this novel appeared under the title Études sur Waltenberg, roman de Hédi Kaddour, at editions Act Mem (series "Lire Aujourd'hui") in 2007. The novel Waltenberg was translated into English by David Coward at Random House in 2007 and in German by Grete Osterwald in 2009 by Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.In January 2010, Hédi Kaddour published two new books: Savoir-vivre, novel, Gallimard, series "Blanche" and "Folio". A German translation appeared by Eichborn Verlag in April 2011. Les Pierres qui montent, notes et croquis de l'année 2008, Gallimard, series "Blanche".In 2015, Hédi Kaddour received the Prix Jean-Freustié for his novel Les Prépondérants [fr], as well as the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française. He was also among the four finalists of the Prix Goncourt which was eventually awarded to Leïla Slimani. In March 2016, he also received the Prix Valery Larbaud for that novel.Three of his poems were put into music in 1999 for voice and piano by composer Karol Beffa in the series Six Mélodies (Le Vin nouveau, Théâtre du vide and La Jalousie); These pieces were subsequently transcribed for violin (or viola) and piano in 2008 (Cinq Pièces).
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