In the Absence of Men - Softcover

Besson, Philippe; Wynne, Frank

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1784876364 ISBN 13: 9781784876364

Publisher: Vintage Uk, 2020

Synopsis

'An astonishing love story, beautifully told' Time Out

'I am sixteen. I am as old as the century'

It is 1916. Vincent is sixteen, on the brink of manhood.

Vincent is aristocratic and privileged, frequenting the salons of Paris while France is at war and the city almost deserted of men. In that brutal summer, Vincent's beauty and precocity captivate two men: Marcel, thirty years his senior, a writer and celebrated socialite; and Arthur, the twenty-one year old son of one of the servants, who is now a soldier at the front.
As both relationships develop Vincent intuitively tries to keep his passions separate, but over the weeks of indolent Parisian summer and far-off war, confidences are made, absences endured, secrets revealed. All of these men will suffer, and Vincent will lose the last vestiges of his childhood innocence.
In the Absence of Men is a stunning first novel to discover this pride season: in its daring in representation and celebration of gay sexuality, in the beauty of its prose and in its delicacy of feeling.

About this title

About the Authors

Philippe Besson is the author of Lie WithMe, which was the Advocate's Best Gay Novel of 2019, a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, and one of O, the Oprah Magazine's "Best LGBTQ Books That'll Change the Literary Landscape in 2019." Frank Wynne won the International Dublin Literary Award jointly with Michel Houellebecq for Atomised. His translation of Frédéric Beigbeder's Windows on the World won the 2005 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and he is a two-time winner of both the Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize for translation from the French and the Premio Valle Inclán for Spanish Translation. 

Philippe Besson is the author of two novels, En L'Absence des hommes and Mon Fr-re. He was born in 1967 in Charente and now lives in Paris

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1
I am sixteen. I am as old as the century.
I know there is a war, that soldiers are dying on the
front lines of this war, that civilians are dying in
the towns and the countryside of France and elsewhere,
that the war – more than the destruction, more
than the mud, more than the whistle of bullets as they
tear through a man’s chest, more than the shattered
faces of the women who wait, hoping sometimes against
hope, for a letter which never arrives, for a leave of
absence perpetually postponed, more than the game
of politics that is played by nations – is the sum of the
simple, cruel, sad and anonymous deaths of soldiers, of
civilians whose names we will one day read on the pediments
of monuments, to the sound of a funeral march.
And yet, I know nothing of war. I live in Paris. I am
a pupil at the lycée Louis-le-Grand.
I am sixteen. People say: what a beautiful child! Look at him, he
really is magnificent. Black hair. Green, almond-
shaped eyes. A girl’s complexion. I say: they are mistaken, I am
no longer a child. 
I am sixteen and I know perfectly well that to be sixteen
is a triumph. More so, perhaps, in time of war.
Because I have escaped the war, while those just a little
older, those who mocked me, have not escaped, and so
are absent. And so I am almost alone, wreathed in the
palpable triumph of my sixteen years, surrounded by
women who take care of me, with their excessive, frightened
care.
I love this new century, which carries with it my
hopes, this century which will be mine.
Mother said time and again, before the summer of
1914, that to be born with the century was a sign from
God, a benediction, a promise of happiness. She was
proud of this miraculous coincidence: my birth, and
that of the twentieth century.
For his part, father spoke of renewal. I think he used
the adjective: modern. I was unaware that he knew the
meaning of the word. He is a man of the old century, of
the past. He is old. My parents are old. My conception
was not planned. My coming was an accident. They
transformed this curse – for curse it must have seemed
at first glance – into an important, long-awaited
event. I am thankful for that accident, that curse.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage Uk
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1784876364
• ISBN 13: 9781784876364
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 177