The Roving Shadows (The Seagull Library of French Literature) - Softcover

Quignard, Pascal

Softcover

ISBN 10: 180309365X ISBN 13: 9781803093659

Publisher: Seagull Books London Ltd, 2024

Synopsis

A bold and adventurous work of literature that explores the relationship between reading, writing, sex, and death. 

The first book in Pascal Quignard’s Last Kingdom series, The Roving Shadows can be read as a long meditation on reading and writing that strives to situate these otherwise innocuous activities in a profound relationship to sex and death. Writing and reading can in fact be linked to our animal natures and artistic strivings, to primal forces and culturally persistent fascinations. With dexterity and inventiveness, Quignard weaves together historical anecdotes, folktales from the East and West, fragments of myth, and speculative historical reconstructions. The whole, written in a musical style not far removed from that of Couperin, whose piano composition Les Ombres errantes lends the book its title, coheres into a work of literature that reverberates in the psyche long after one has laid it down.

The Roving Shadows is a rare and wondrous tour de force that cements Quignard’s reputation in contemporary world literature. Available now in English, this boldly adventurous work will find a new and welcoming audience.

About this title

About the Author

Pascal Quignard is the author of more than sixty titles and is widely regarded as one of the foremost literary French writers today. In 2002, he won France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, with The Roving Shadows, the first work of nonfiction to win the prize.

Edition details

• Publisher: Seagull Books London Ltd
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 180309365X
• ISBN 13: 9781803093659
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 248