25 May
By Jennifer Croft I’ve been getting a lot of good news lately. Among the best of it is the fact that Frank Wynne’s translation of the next volume of Virginie Despentes’s Vernon Subutex trilogy is done and will be out in July. I can’t believe I get to read another one! Let alone two more. […]
10 May
Virginie Despentes’s Vernon Subutex 1: review by Rebecca Rukeyser … The characters in Vernon Subutex 1, in all their livid ugliness, thrust the reader into unexpected empathy. Vernon is a hangdog Everyman even at his most cretinous, and the most unsavory of his hosts reveal anguish layered under their scar tissue. Vernon Subutex grinds you […]
02 May
“With the first in a picaresque trilogy, now shortlisted for the Man Booker international prize, Virginie Despentes has delivered both an achingly cool punk burlesque and a satirical epic with nods to Rabelais and Swift. A foul-mouthed skewering of the morass that is modern society, and France in particular, the book is translated by Frank […]
19 Apr
With Boyd Tonkin, former chair of the International Booker and author of the forthcoming The 100 Best Novels in Translation, and Frank Wynne, nominated in the International Booker shortlist for his translation of Virginie Despentes. Presented by Sam Leith. Read more at Audioboom…
13 Mar
Taking a look at the two big prizes announced this week, Claire, Sian and Richard discuss which books they’re excited to read and discover on the Man Booker International prize for translated fiction and the Women’s prize for fiction (previously known as the Baileys prize). Then Richard sits down with Imogen Hermes Gowar, one of […]
14 Oct
Review by Eileen Battersby of the Irish Times: ” The stage is set for what will prove one of the books of the year, if not the decade, and as it is the first volume of a trilogy and already has a cult following on France, the best advice is, simply, to read it and pass on […]
10 Oct
By Mira Kandar for the New York Times “Despentes is France’s most famous bad-girl author. A rape survivor who has worked as a prostitute and a housemaid, Despentes’ unapologetically feminist eye picks out the telling details of contemporary French society’s casual ennui and petty hypocrisies. Her “Vernon Subutex” series of novels — there are three […]
01 Aug
Book Blast Diary “Vernon Subutex 1 is universal in its portrayal of the harshness of urban life and the evolution of Western society over the last 25 years or so. Paris has always been an international cultural crossroads where celebrities from the worlds of fashion, music, art, literature and politics converge. Not much has been […]
