14 (Spanish Edition) - Softcover

Echenoz, Jean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 843397873X ISBN 13: 9788433978738

Publisher: Editorial Anagrama, 2013

Synopsis

Como escribir sobre la Gran Guerra, la primera guerra «tecnologica» del siglo XX, y la puerta, tambien, a medio siglo de barbarie sin precedentes? Echenoz se enfrenta a un nuevo reto literario que supera con maestria. La certera pluma del escritor avanza junto a los soldados en sus largas jornadas de marcha por los paises en guerra y acompana a cuatro jovenes de la Vendee, Anthime y sus amigos, en medio de una masa indiscernible de carne y metal, de proyectiles y muertos. Pero tambien nos cuenta la vida que continua, lejos de las trincheras, a traves de personajes como Blanche y su familia. Y todo ello sin renunciar a esa sutil ironia que caracteriza su escritura, condimento imprescindible de un relato apasionante. «Esta novela corta, con ecos de Jules y Jim () es un nuevo concentrado del arte de Echenoz» (Norbert Czarny, La Quinzaine Litteraire). «Alistarse en la Gran Guerra, despues de que tantos lo hicieran, era un gran riesgo para Jean Echenoz. Pues bien, la ha ganado, y ha regresado integro» (Bernard Pivot, Le Journal du Dimanche). «Esta nueva novela concentra y sintetiza lo mejor de la escritura echenoziana» (Florence Bouchy, Le Monde). / How to write about the Great War? The first technological conflict of the XXth Century, the doorway, also, to half a century of barbarity without preceden.Echenoz takes on a new literary challenge andrises toit masterfully. The confident pen of the author advances alongside the soldiers on their long marches through the fields of war, accompanying four young men of theVendée: Anthime and his friends, caughtin the middle of an indiscernible mass of meat and metal, of projectiles and death. But it also speaks about the life that goes on, far from the trenches, of the life lived by characters like Blanche and her family. And this fascinating story is toldwith the subtle irony that characterizes this authors writing. «This short novel, with echoes of Jules y Jim ()is a new concentrate of the art of Echenoz» (Norbert Czarny, La QuinzaineLittéraire); «Alistarsein the Great War, after so many had tried to do it,this was a big risk for Jean Echenoz. Well, he has gone into battleand made it back safely» (Bernard Pivot, Le Journal du Dimanche); «This new novel concentrates and synthesizes the best of this authors writing» (Florence Bouchy, Le Monde). By the same author: El meridiano de Greenwich, Cherokee (Médicis Prize), La aventuramalaya, Lago (European Literary Prize, awarded in 1999 for the first time), Nosotrostres, Rubiaspeligrosas (November Prize), Me voy (Prix Goncourt), Al piano,Ravel, CorrerandRelámpagos.

About this title

About the Author:

Jean Echenoz est né à Orange en 1947. Il a obtenu le prix Médicis en 1983 pour Cherokee et le prix Goncourt en 1999 pour Je m’en vais. 14 est son quinzième roman publié aux Éditions de Minuit.

Review:

The story could hardly be simpler. Five young Frenchmen leave their village to fight in the Great War. Some will be grievously injured, some won t return.

But in the hands of France s literary magician Jean Echenoz, this exceedingly short, bare narrative 118 pages, counting eight pages of translator s notes feels like an epic. Here is history compressed to the density of a poem.

The novel begins on the first day of August 1914 (the marking of time will be a theme), in a radiant pastoral landscape. A cyclist, Anthime, looks down from a hill on the market towns below, disturbed only by a loud unseasonable eruption of wind rampaging everywhere. When it dies away, he hears church bells somberly ringing the tocsin, a signal of mobilization. That noisy, disorderly gust of wind is no clumsy symbol. It is as close as we will get to an analysis or explanation of the hostilities to come. Unseen forces, natural and naturally indifferent, are about to sweep Anthime and his friends toward the trenches of the Somme.

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Echenoz s novels are often the opposite of realistic playful fantasies in which characters bounce in and out of sight like acrobats on a trampoline, with plots that hopscotch wildly over time and space. But in 1914 numerous details pin us to a precise historical reality: the brand name of a camera, the Rêve Idéal, or the ­ licorice-brown canvas of a French soldier s knapsack. In a Farman F-37 biplane, one of the crew members pulls out a Savage pistol especially adapted for aviation, fitted with a screen to catch spent casings so they won t stray into the propeller.

Such authenticity creates a world of objects that are brought to life by Echenoz s unmistakable voice. Witty, passionate, by turns intimate and coolly distant, it is a voice fond of long, lovingly assembled Rabelaisian lists that provide a perfect foil to the chaos of combat. One remarkable chapter describes all the notable animals of World War I, from the largest and most useful (cows) to the smallest and most hated (lice), with a bleak coda on the rat. Another inventories the astonishing variety of furniture woods in a bedroom and concludes that they do not get along, they cannot even stand one another.

At times this form of narration may strike readers as grotesquely dispassionate. Horrifying scenes are rendered in a tone drained of all emotion: Anthime and Bossis could see the incineration of two airmen killed on impact and still strapped in, transformed into sizzling skeletons hanging by their seat straps. Elsewhere, Echenoz defuses shock with ludicrous mathematics: a bullet travels 40 feet through the air at 3,280 feet per second at an altitude of 2,300 feet to enter the left eye of Noblès.

And then, unexpectedly, an image flies off the page to create a human context: A piece of shrapnel is as clipped as a postscript: an iron fragment shaped like a polished Neolithic ax, smoking hot. Or the downy lightness of Echenoz s French perfectly captured by the translator, Linda Coverdale turns grimly lyric. In a town emptied of all its young men, Blanche sees only old fellows and kids, whose footsteps sound hollow on a stage too large for them.

And once or twice, Echenoz s profound and hopeless fury, held in check by the brevity and reserve of his storytelling, breaks through the latticework of words: We all know the rest. --New York Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Editorial Anagrama
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 843397873X
• ISBN 13: 9788433978738
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 104