Nothing But Dust - Softcover

Sandrine Collette

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1609454332 ISBN 13: 9781609454333

Publisher: Europa Editions, 2018

Synopsis

By the time Rafael is born, the family farm has already gone to hell. Rafael s father has abandoned them. His older brothers, the twins Mauro and Joaquin, blame Rafael for their father s departure and exact revenge on their baby brother. Steban, his other sibling, is a simpleton whose affections and allegiances change with the shifting winds. Ruling over this dysfunctional roost is a tyrannical and avaricious mother.

On the lonely Patagonian steppe, life is lived to the rhythms of the family farm.
But there is nothing bucolic about the existence described in these pages:
it is ruthless, unforgiving, and bloody. As the family tensions mount, daily life
degenerates into open warfare.

Reminiscent of Coetzee s Disgrace, Chatwin s In Patagonia, the Dust Bowl novels of Steinbeck, the writing of Cormac McCarthy, and the southern gothic of William Faulkner, Nothing But Dust is a gripping, unsentimental, ultimately majestic story about life in one the most inhospitable places on Earth.

About this title

Review:

Praise for Nothing But Dust

A combination of a South American Western and a noir, Nothing But Dust has airs of Faulknerian tragedy in full Argentinian heat. A vicious circle
of cruelty and redemption, written with complete austerity.
Lire

[Sandrine Collette] has a gift. The gift to lose herself in unknown,
inhospitable lands and, as if by magic, to bring forth from them the harshest
bitterness and the most firmly hidden beauty. --L Express

A claustrophobic drama placed in a setting both hostile and sublime. --Biblioteca Magazine

The novel s descriptions of nature are at times exalted, at others coldly
descriptive but in spite of the severity that dominates the setting, in Collette s
prose, the young Rafael is a radiant hero. --Télérama

About the Author:

Sandrine Collette was born in Paris in 1970. She divides her time between Nanterre, where she teaches philosophy and literature, and Burgundy, where she has a horse stud farm. She is the author of numerous novels. Nothing But Dust, winner of the Landerneau Prize for crime fiction, is her English language debut.

Alison Anderson's translations for Europa Editions include novels by Sélim Nassib, Amélie Nothomb, and Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. She is the translator of The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Europa, 2008) and The Life of the Elves (Europa, 2016) by Muriel Barbery.

About this edition

• Publisher: Europa Editions
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1609454332
• ISBN 13: 9781609454333
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304