Category: French

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French terribleman.com Translation Virginie Despentes

Dear Dickhead

Book cover of the novel DEAR DICKHEAD by Virginie Despentes, translated by Frank Wynne.
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Dear Dickhead,
I read the piece you posted on Insta. You’re like a pigeon shitting on my shoulder as you flap past. It’s shitty and unpleasant. Congratulations: you’ve had your fifteen minutes of fame! You want proof? Here I am writing to you.

Rebecca Latté is a famous actress in her fifties, perhaps past the peak of her career.

Oscar Jayack is a middle-aged, moderately successful author who, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, has been accused of sexual harassment by his former publicist-turned-feminist blogger Zoé Katana.

When Oscar insults Rebecca’s appearance on Instagram, she sends a scorching reply and the pair fall into a spiral of mutual antipathy. In back-and-forth emails, they vie for the last word, finding common ground in their experiences of addiction, assessing the changing world around them as Covid locks down Paris, and reluctantly beginning to lean on one another.

A novel of rage, irreverence and vulnerability, exploring ageing, gender, privilege, addiction and consent, Dear Dickhead is an excoriating encapsulation of our times and of the broken human beings trying to make sense of it.

Dear Dickhead by Virginie Despentes, translated from the French by Frank Wynne.

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French Mathias Énard terribleman.com Translation

The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild

Cover image of the US edition of the novel The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild, by Mathias Énard, translated by Frank WynneWINNER OF THE 2024 FRENCH-AMERICAN FOUNDATION TRANSLATION PRIZE

To research his thesis on contemporary agrarian life, anthropology student David Mazon moves from Paris to La Pierre-Saint-Christophe, a village in the marshlands of western France. Determined to capture the essence of rurality, the intrepid scholar shuttles around on his moped to interview local residents. Unbeknownst to David, in these nondescript lands, once theatres of wars and revolutions, Death leads the dance. When an existence ends, the Wheel of Life recycles its soul and hurls it back into the world as microbe, human or wild animal, sometimes in the past, sometimes in the future. Only once a year do Death and the living observe a temporary truce, during a gargantuan three-day feast where gravediggers gorge themselves on food, libations and language. Brimming with Mathias Énard’s characteristic wit and encyclopaedic brilliance, The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild is a riotous novel where the edges between past and present are constantly dissolving against a Rabelaisian backdrop of excess – and a paradoxically macabre paean to life’s richness.

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Awards & Nominations Featured French terribleman.com

Animalia wins RoC Prize

Animalia by Jean-Baptiste de Amo has won the 2020 Republic of Consciousness prize. The Republic of Consciousness supports, promotes and celebrates small presses in the UK and Ireland. We have awarded over £40,000 through our prize in four years to publishers and authors. This years judges were Roland Gulliver, Sophie Lewis and Sam Mills. The prize is shared between the publisher, author and translator. This year, Fitzcarraldo became the first publisher to win the prize twice.

In their summation the jury said:
“Frank Wynne – one of the best translators working today – does a masterful job of capturing Jean-Baptiste Del Amo’s rich, lyrical and inventive style as he explores the (mis)fortunes of a peasant farming family in France across five generations, against a backdrop of war, economic disaster and industrialisation. This is no pastoral – it is a savage and brutal book, replete with sex and violence, which is also spellbinding, strange and immersive.”

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French terribleman.com Translation

Vernon Subutex 3

Although it means leaving behind the community of disciples who have followed him on his travels and assembled at his raves and gatherings, Vernon Subutex is compelled to return to Paris to visit the dentist.

Once back in the city, he learns that Charles, his old friend from his days on the Paris streets, has died and left him half of a lottery win. But when Vernon returns to his disciples with news of this windfall, it does not take long before his followers start to turn on each other, and his good fortune provokes ruptures in his once harmonious community.

Meanwhile, storm clouds are gathering for Aïcha and Céleste: Laurent Dopalet is determined to make them pay for their attack on him, whatever it takes and whoever gets hurt.

And before long, the whole of Paris will be reeling in the wake of the terrorist atrocities of 2015 and 2016, and all the characters in this kaleidoscopic portrait of a city will be forced to a reckoning with each other.

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Awards & Nominations BTBA French News terribleman.com

“Animalia” makes BTBA Finalists

Animalia by Jean-Baptiste del Amo is among the finalists for the 2020 The Best Translated Books Awards for fiction. The award, founded by Three Percent at the University of Rochester, comes with $10,000 in prizes from the Amazon Literary Partnership. The prize will be split evenly between the winning authors and translators.

BTBA Finalists

At Three Percent, guest writers contributed arguments for why each nominee deserves to win this year’s award.

Best Translated Book Award 2020: Fiction Finalists

Animalia by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, translated from the French by Frank Wynne (France, Grove)

EEG by Daša Drndić, translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth (Croatia, New Directions)

Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman, translated from the Russian by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler (Russia, New York Review Books)

Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz, translated from the Spanish by Sarah Moses and Carolina Orloff (Argentina, Charco Press)

Good Will Come From the Sea by Christos Ikonomou, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich (Greece, Archipelago Books)

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder (Japan, Pantheon)

77 by Guillermo Saccomanno, translated from the Spanish by Andrea G. Labinger (Argentina, Open Letter Books)

Beyond Babylon by Igiaba Scego, translated from the Italian by Aaron Robertson (Italy, Two Lines Press)

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Poland, Riverhead)

Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima, translated from the Japanese by Geraldine Harcourt (Japan, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

This year’s fiction jury is comprised of Elisa Wouk Almino, Pierce Alquist, Hailey Dezort, Louisa Ermelino, Hal Hlavinka, Keaton Patterson, Christopher Phipps, Lesley Rains, and Justin Walls.

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Awards & Nominations French News terribleman.com

2020 Lambda Literary Awards

Jean-Baptiste del Amo’s novel Animalia is among the finalists in the Gay Fiction catergory for the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards. Since 1989, the Lammys (as they’re known colloquially) have recognized the critical role LGBTQ writers play in shaping our culture and society at large. Past winners have included literary legends like Alison Bechdel, Michael Cunningham, Roxane Gay, Audre Lorde, and many others.

“LGBTQ visibility has increased and the general public’s understanding of the queer community has deepened,” says Sue Landers, the Executive Director of Lambda Literary, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness of and showcasing LGBTQ authors and works. “Yet in many places in this world right now, it is still dangerous to be LGBTQ, which makes it all the more important to write and share our stories so that queer life can be better understood and celebrated.”

for the full list of all categories, visit the Lammys website.

Gay Fiction (Finalists)

  • Animalia, Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, translated by Frank Wynne, Grove Press
  • The Archive of Alternate Endings, Lindsey Drager, Dzanc Books
  • In West Mills, De’Shawn Charles Winslow, Bloomsbury Publishing
  • Like This Afternoon Forever, Jaime Manrique, Kaylie Jones Books
  • Lord, João Gilberto Noll, translated by Edgar Garbelotto, Two Lines Press
  • Lot, Bryan Washington, Riverhead Books
  • Murmur, Will Eaves, Bellevue Literary Press
  • On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong, Penguin Press
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Beigbeder French terribleman.com Translation

A Life Without End

What does the man who has everything―fame, fortune, a new love, and a new baby―want for his fiftieth birthday? The answer is simple: eternal life. Determined to shake off the first intimations of his approaching demise, Frédéric tries every possible procedure to ward off death, examining both legal and illegal research into techniques that could lead to the imminent replacement of man with a post-human species.

Accompanied by his ten-year-old daughter and her robot friend, Frédéric crisscrosses the globe to meet the world’s foremost researchers on human longevity, who–from cell rejuvenation and telomere lengthening to 3D-printed organs and digitally stored DNA–reveal their latest discoveries. With his blend of deadpan humor and clear-eyed perception, Beigbeder has penned a brutal and brilliant exposé of the enduring issue of our own mortality.