-Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal Fall Announcement Ads -Advance Access Galley Mailing -Reviewer attention from those looking for translations. -Châteaureynaud has been writing for decades and we will have announcements about more titles by him for future lists. -Châteaureynaud looks like late-period Vonnegut -- and writes as if Vonnegut had up and moved to France in the 1970s. We will get his picture and story out into the literary world as one of the great ignored treasures of the Francophone world being brought to English readers at last. -Translator Gauvin has recently placed Châteaureynaud's stories in numerous journals and magazines, including Agni Online, Brooklyn Rail, Cafe Irreal, Conjunctions, Epiphany, Fantasy & Science Fiction, LCRW, Words Without Borders, and others, preparing the ground for a full collection of Châteaureynaud's work.
Georges-Olivier Chteaureynaud is the author of nine novels, two
young adult novels, and over one hundred short stories. Despite a
lifelong fear of flying, he has been to Peru-his only time on a
plane-and lived to pen a travel memoir about the experience. He is
the recipient of the prestigious Prix Renaudot, Prix Goncourt de la
nouvelle (for short stories), Prix Giono, Prix Valry Larbaud, and
the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire. His work has been translated into
fourteen languages.
Born in Paris in 1947, Chteaureynaud was a solitary child who
became a voracious and unprejudiced reader, ingesting Treasure
Island as avidly as Lady Chatterley's Lover. He studied English at
the Sorbonne, discovering Stevenson, Shelley, Stoker, and Wells,
and later took a degree in library science from the cole Nationale
Suprieure des Bibliothques. In 1968, he embarked on a series of odd
jobs-including antiques dealer and auto assembly line laborer-that
comprised, in his words, an "apprenticeship in human nature,"
cementing his sympathy for the marginal, outcast figures who would
become his luckless, well-meaning, Everyman heroes and narrators.
Grasset published his first collection in 1973, Le fou dans la
chaloupe.
With novelist Hubert Haddad, and fellow Goncourt winners Frdric
Tristan and sinologist Jean Lvi, Chteaureynaud is a founding member
of the contemporary movement La Nouvelle Fiction: "New" because it
rose up against the prevailingly minimalist and confessional
tendencies (autofiction) of recent French writing, seeking to rouse
it from what critic Jean-Luc Moreau called "the slumber of
psychological realism," and to restore myth, fable, and fairy tale
to a place of primacy in fiction.
In 1983 and 1990, Chteaureynaud was a representative of the Foreign
Services Ministry to Quebec and then to Greece. He has been
consistently involved with the Centre National du Livre and the
SGDL (Socit des Gens de Lettres de France). He plays an active part
in fostering new talent, serving on the juries of such diverse
prizes as the Fondation BNP-Paribas Young Writers Award, the
international Prix Promthe de la nouvelle, the Prix Renaudot, and
the Prix Renaissance. Chteaureynaud sees his enthusiastic
participation in these institutions as a way of repaying the
literary community that has allowed him the luxury of dedication to
his craft. An Officier des Arts et Lettres of France, he is
currently the editorial director of foreign literature at Editions
Dumerchez. In 2006, he was made a Chevalier de la Lgion
d'Honneur.
Edward Gauvin has published Chteaureynaud's work in AGNI Online,
The Southern Review, Conjunctions, Harvard Review, Words Without
Borders, LCRW, Postscripts, Epiphany, The Caf Irreal, Eleven
Eleven, Sentence, and The Brooklyn Rail. A graduate of the Iowa
Workshop, he has received a Fulbright grant as well as fellowships
from the Centre National du Livre, the American Literary
Translators Association (ALTA) and the Clarion Foundation and
residencies from the Maison des critures Midi-Pyrnes, Ledig House,
and the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Other
translations of his have been featured or are forthcoming in PEN
America, Tin House, Interfictions 2, Subtropics, Silk Road, Two
Lines, and Absinthe. A consulting editor for graphic literature at
Words Without Borders, he translates comics for Archaia, First
Second, and Tokyopop. He has lived in Austin, Pittsburgh, Los
Angeles, New York, Taipei, and Amiens, France.
"As weird as they are elegant, as delicious as they are unsettling, these fables place Chateaureynaud in the secret brotherhood that has only exemplars, no definition: Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Nathanael West, Aimee Bender. We are lucky indeed to have them, in a very skilled translation." --John Crowley (Little, Big) "These 22 curious tales verging on the perverse will strike new English readers of Chateaureynaud's work as a wonderful find. Beautiful prose featuring ingenuous protagonists and clever, unexpected forays into horror are the hallmarks of these mischievous stories." --Publishers Weekly
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