Archives de catégorie : Literary

Joyce Carol Oates remporte le Prix mondial Cino Del Duca 2020

Le prestigieux Prix mondial Cino del Duca vient d’être décerné à Joyce Carol Oates pour l’ensemble de son œuvre.

Souvent considéré comme un tremplin pour le Prix Nobel, le Prix mondial Cino del Duca est l’un des quatre grands prix des fondations de l’Institut de France et récompense une personnalité littéraire ou scientifique « qui, outre ses talents artistiques ou professionnels, s’impose comme un grand humaniste. » Son jury est composé de membres des cinq Académies.

L’autrice américaine, qui aura 82 ans en juin, est l’une des plus grandes écrivaines anglophones contemporaines. On lui doit plus de soixante-dix romans, essais, recueils de nouvelles et de poésie, pièces de théâtre, et romans policiers publiés sous les noms de plume Rosamond Smith et Lauren Kelly. Son œuvre, qui dresse un tableau très critique de la société américaine contemporaine et de ses tensions, a été récompensée par de nombreux prix littéraires. Les romans Reflets en eau trouble, Corky et Blonde ont été finaliste du Prix Pulitzer.

Joyce Carol Oates est publiée en français aux éditions Philippe Rey. Son dernier roman traduit en français, Un livre de martyrs américains sur la remise en cause du droit à l’avortement aux États-Unis, a été finaliste du prix Médicis l’an dernier.

TWELVE de Myriam J. A. Chancy

A novel about crisis — in this case the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 — which explores the way people find ways to cope even in the darkest of times. The messages in Myriam’s novel — those of hope, courage, resilience, and the importance of community — are ideas that will resonate with readers at this time and far into the future.

TWELVE
by Myriam J. A. Chancy
Tin House, publication date TBD

Embracing the ambition of Marlon James’ and the vivid storytelling of Bernadine Evaristo, TWELVE skillfully interweaves the lives of a group of people, all linked through friendships and family, before, during and after the catastrophic Haitian earthquake. Chancy reveals the inner lives of each of her characters, drawing the reader into their hopes, dreams and regrets, and recounts how each of them do — or do not — survive. TWELVE is a masterful literary portrait of a group of citizens in Port au Prince as they struggle in the face of disaster.

« Myriam Chancy has written a gorgeous and compulsively readable, page-turner in the most haunting and stunning prose. This novel is exactly what we need during this time of uncertainty and crisis. Twelve’s characters reveal to us how to bend and not break when facing loss, grief, and displacement. If you love the works of Jesmyn Ward, Edwidge Danticat and J.M Coetzee, this is the book for you! Absolutely breathtaking! » —Angie Cruz, author of Dominicana, nominated for the 2020 Women’s Prize

Myriam J. A. Chancy is a Haitian-Canadian-American writer and a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She is currently the Hartley Burr Alexander Chair of Humanities at Scripps College in California. As a writer, she focuses on Haitian culture, gender, class, sexuality, and Caribbean women’s studies. Her novels have won several awards, including the prestigious Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award.

Les conseils de lecture de Paulette Jiles

Dans l’article « Paulette Jiles on Little Women, All the Pretty Horses, and Hating Balzac » qui vient d’être publié sur le site américain Lit Hub, l’auteure de Simon the Fiddler nous parle de treize livres qui l’ont marquée.

Paulette Jiles est l’auteure de Cousins, une autobiographie, et des romans Enemy Women, Stormy Weather, The Color of Lightning, Lighthouse Island, et News of the World qui a été finaliste pour le National Book Award 2016 et publié en français aux édition de la Table Ronde (Des nouvelles du monde, mai 2018, traduction de Jean Esch). Elle vit dans un ranch près de San Antonio, au Texas.

Son nouveau roman Simon the Fiddler vient de paraître aux Etats-Unis chez William Morrow. Les droits de langue française sont toujours disponibles.

THE WORLD GIVES WAY de Marissa Levien

An unforgettable portrait of a society in freefall, and finding humanity even at the end of it all. Darkly beautiful, bursting with soul and imagination, this stunning sci-fi debut is Station Eleven and The Age of Miracles meets Ted Chiang meets Melancholia, for the literary reader who loves genre-busting, speculative character-driven dramas set “five minutes into the future.”

THE WORLD GIVES WAY
by Marissa Levien
Redhook/Hachette US, September 2021

THE WORLD GIVES WAY is set on a generation ship carrying those wealthy enough have escaped Earth—and the contract workers bound to serve them for the ship’s two-hundred-year journey. Myrra Dal was born an indentured worker on this ship, but her generation will live to see the journey’s end and the expiration of their contracts; she just has to spend the next fifty years serving the powerful Carlyles first. But when Myrra discovers the catastrophic secret the elites have been harboring, everything changes. There’s a crack in the ship’s hull, and everyone on board has two months left to live—if that. Burdened with the secret of a lifetime, and the Carlyles’ infant daughter, she runs—but someone is hot on her trail, and not even the end of the world can stop him.

Marissa Levien is a recent graduate of Stony Brook University’s MFA program. Her work has been published in Slice, LARB PubLab, The Toast, and featured on Glimmer Train‘s Honorable Mentions List. She lives in New York.

MARGREETE’S HARBOR de Eleanor Morse

For readers of Elizabeth Strout, Alice Munro, and Anne Tyler this literary novel traces the life of a family and its matriarch over the course of a decade.

MARGREETE’S HARBOR
by Eleanor Morse
St. Martin’s Press, April 2021

MARGREETE’S HARBOR begins with a fire: a fiercely-independent, thrice-widowed woman living on her own in a rambling house near the Maine coast forgets a hot pan on the stovetop, and nearly burns her place down. When Margreete Bright calls her daughter Liddie to confess, Liddie realizes that her mother can no longer live alone. She, her husband Harry, and their children Eva and Bernie move from a settled life in Michigan across the country to Margreete’s isolated home, and begin a new life. MARGREETE’S HARBOR tells the story of ten years in the history of a family: a novel of small moments, intimate betrayals, arrivals and disappearances. Liddie, a professional cellist, struggles to find space for her music in a marriage that increasingly confines her; Harry’s critical approach to the growing war in Vietnam endangers his new position as a high school history teacher; Bernie and Eva begin to find their own identities as young adults; and Margreete slowly descends into a private world of memories, even as she comes to find a larger purpose in them. This beautiful novel—attuned to the seasons of nature, the internal dynamics of a family, and a nation torn by its contradicting ideals—reveals the largest meanings in the smallest and most secret moments of life.

Eleanor Morse is the author of White Dog Fell from the Sky and An Unexpected Forest, which won the Independent Publisher’s Gold Medalist Award for Best Regional Fiction in the Northeast United States, and was selected as the Winner of the Best Published Fiction by the Maine writers and Publishers Alliance. Morse has taught in adult education programs, in prisons, and in university systems, both in Maine and in southern Africa. She lives on Peaks Island, Maine.