Autoportrait
Edouard Leve author Edouard Lev? author Aedouard Levae author Edouard Lev? editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Dalkey Archive Press
Published:29th Mar '12
Should be back in stock very soon
A brilliant and sobering self-portrait made up entirely of facts, and a companion to the harrowing book Suicide.
In this brilliant and sobering self-portrait, Edouard Lev? hides nothing from his readers, setting out his entire life, more or less at random, in a string of declarative sentences. "Autoportrait" is a physical, psychological, sexual, political, and philosophical triumph. Beyond "sincerity," Lev? works toward an objectivity so radical it could pass for crudeness, triviality, even banality: the author has stripped himself bare. With the force of a set of maxims or morals, Lev?'s prose seems at first to be an autobiography without sentiment, as though written by a machine--until, through the accumulation of detail, and the author's dry, quizzical tone, we find ourselves disarmed, enthralled, and enraptured by nothing less than the perfect fiction... made entirely of facts.
"I’ll go ahead and call [Autoportrait] a work of genius..." —Wayne Koestenbaum, Bookforum "Autoportrait is a delight the first time around and only gets better upon rereading or being read alongside Levé’s other works." —Words Without Borders "...a beguiling and sui generis self-portrait..." —The Paris Review
- Commended for Best Translated Book Award (Fiction) 2013
ISBN: 9781564787071
Dimensions: 172mm x 124mm x 10mm
Weight: 136g
120 pages