Seven Houses in France

Seven Houses in France

by Margaret Jull Costa (Translator), Bernardo Atxaga (Author), Bernardo Atxaga (Author), Margaret Jull Costa (Translator), Margaret Jull Costa (Translator)

Synopsis

1903, and Captain Lalande Biran, overseeing a garrison on the banks of the Congo, has an ambition: to amass a fortune and return to the literary cafes of Paris. His glamorous wife Christine has a further ambition: to own seven houses in France, a house for every year he has been abroad. At the Captain's side are an ex-legionnaire womaniser, and a servile, treacherous man who dreams of running a brothel. At their hands the jungle is transformed into a wild circus of human ambition and absurdity. But everything changes with the arrival of a new officer and brilliant marksman: the enigmatic Chrysostome Liege.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 01 Nov 2012

ISBN 10: 0099552256
ISBN 13: 9780099552253
Book Overview: Longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2012 - a dark tale of human ambition by the European master A.S. Byatt called 'A brilliantly inventive writer'.

Media Reviews
A dark comedy about the vanity of human desires which deftly balances compassion and cynicism * Financial Times *
Bizarrely funny and beautifully crafted * Times Literary Supplement *
Undeniably compelling * Daily Mail *
A brilliantly inventive writer...He understands the nature of storytelling and is at once terribly moving and wildly funny -- A. S. Byatt
Seven Houses in France is an enjoyable, somewhat frightening novel by one of Europe's best novelists... Atxaga is still the master of a complex story, told with deceptive simplicity -- Michael Eaude * Independent *
Author Bio
Bernardo Atxaga was born in Gipuzkoa in Spain in 1951 and lives in the Basque Country, writing in Basque and Spanish. He is a prizewinning novelist and poet, whose books, including Obabakoak and The Accordionist's Son, have won critical acclaim in Spain and abroad. His works have been translated into twenty-two languages. Margaret Jull Costa has been a literary translator from Spanish and Portugese for over twenty years, translating such writers as Jose Saramago, Eca de Queiroz, Luis Fernando Verissimo and Fernando Pessoa. Her work has brought her a number of prizes, the most recent of which was the 2010 Premio Valle-Inclan for Javier Marias' Your Face Tomorrow 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell.