Five Frenchmen go off to war, two of them leaving behind a certain young woman who longs for their return. But the main character in 1914 is the Great War itself. Jean Echenoz, the multi-award-winning French literary magician whose work has been compared to Joseph Conrad and Lawrence Sterne, has brought that deathtrap back to life, leading us gently from a balmy summer day deep into the insatiable—and still unthinkable—carnage of...

This Goncourt Prize-winning novel is about a Parisian art dealer who walks out on his wife to join a treasure hunting expedition to the Arctic, only to find himself caught up in a theft. Echenoz has produced a suspenseful crime caper, a look at the uncertainties of love, and a witty foray into corruption in the art market.

Peripeties en cascades en un voyage de fuite ves le pole Nord. Style lunatique et satire critique dans les milieux de l'art. Prix Goncourt 1999. [SDM].

"Max Delmarc, age fifty, is a famous concert pianist with two problems: the first, severe stage fright for which the second, alcohol, is the only cure. In this unparalled comedy by Prix Goncourt-winner Jean Echenoz, we journey with Max from the trials of his everyday life to his untimely death and on into the afterlife." "After a brief stay in purgatory - part luxury hotel, part minimum-security prison supervised by dead celebrities - Max is sentenced...

"Whether you call her a coldhearted grifter or the soul of modern capitalism, there's no question that Aimée is a killer and a more than professional one. Now she's set her eyes on a backwater burg--where, while posing as an innocent (albeit drop-dead gorgeous) newcomer to town, she means to sniff out old grudges and engineer new opportunities, deftly playing different people and different interests against each other the better, as always, to make...