The Round and Other Cold Hard Facts - Softcover

Le Clezio, J.M.G.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803280076 ISBN 13: 9780803280076

Publisher: Bison Books, 2002

Synopsis

Set largely in locations near the French Riviera, these eleven short stories depict the harsh realities of life for the less-privileged inhabitants of this very privileged region. Distinguished French writer J. M. G. Le Clézio lends his voice to the dispossessed and explores his familiar themes of alienation, immigration, poverty, violence, indifference, the loss of beauty, and the betrayal of innocence.

In one story an adolescent girl encounters the violence of a gang of masked bikers in a hostile and desolate housing project. In others a man stands by helplessly as a place of great beauty and deep childhood memory is slowly consumed and destroyed by a quickly developing city, an illegal immigrant desperate for work finds himself the prisoner of a ring trafficking in human beings, and two girls risk everything by running away from home and their dead-end factory jobs in search of a more meaningful life. At once tragic and evocative, these engrossing and beautifully crafted stories touch upon the loss of human values in a rapidly changing world.

About this title

Review:

"Le Clezio is an intensely atmospheric, nearly hallucinatory writer, and in his riveting and eviscerating short stories, dreams turn inexorably into nightmares."--Booklist Mentioned in The New York Times (Paperback Row) December 28, 2008

From the Author:

Winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature, J. M. G. Le Clézio was born in Nice in 1940 and is one of France’s best-known contemporary writers. He has published more than thirty novels and nonfiction works. In the course of the last four decades Le Clézio has won numerous prizes, including the Prix Renaudot for his first novel. His works have been translated into many languages.

C. Dickson is a translator living in France. Her translations include Shams Nadir's The Astrolabe of the Sea and Mohammad Dib's The Savage Night (Nebraska 2001).

About this edition

• Publisher: Bison Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0803280076
• ISBN 13: 9780803280076
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 214