35. “Pecore Nere” di Gabriella Kuruvilla, Ingy Mubiayi, Igiaba Scego e Laila Wadia

Anno di prima pubblicazione: 2005
Genere: raccolta di racconti
Paese: Italia

Editori Laterza (€ 9,50)

La recensione di questo libro si trova nella rivista culturale on-line Paper Street a questo link.

Nell'articolo pubblicato su Paper Street non ho potuto parlare molto delle autrici per motivi di spazio, ma forse le conoscerete già un po' perché tutte e quattro scrivono per la popolare rubrica "Italieni" che esce settimanalmente su Internazionale.

Gabriella Kuruvilla è nata nel 1969 a Milano da padre indiano e madre italiana. Si è laureata in architettura ed ha collaborato con numerose riviste. Ora si dedica a tempo pieno alla scrittura e alla pittura. Nel 2001 ha pubblicato con lo pseudonimo di Viola Chandra il libro Media Chiara e Noccioline. Nel 2008 ha pubblicato la raccolta di racconti E’ la vita, dolcezza. I suoi quadri sono stati esposti sia in Italia che all’estero. Leggi un suo racconto a questo link e visita il suo sito personale per vedere i suoi quadri e leggere degli estratti.

Igiaba Scego è nata nel 1974 a Roma da genitori somali espatriati nel 1969 dopo il golpe di Siad Barre e fino alla prima media andava ogni estate a Mogadiscio. Dopo essersi laureata in lingue straniere alla Sapienza, ha fatto un dottorato di ricerca in pedagogia. Scrive per numerosi quotidiani e riviste, tra cui L’Unità (qui la sua rubrica) e Nigrizia. Ha scritto i romanzi La Nomade che Amava Alfred Hitchcock (2003), Rhoda (2004) e Oltre Babilonia (2008). Inoltre, ha curato Quando Nasci è una Roulette insieme a Ingy Mubiayi e la raccolta di racconti Italiani per Vocazione (2005). Un suo racconto è anche presente in Amori Bicolori (2008). Recentemente ha curato un programma su Radio3 intitolato “Black Italians”. Leggi un suo racconto a questo link.

Ingy Mubiayi Kakese è nata nel 1972 al Cairo da padre zairese e madre egiziana. E’ arrivata in Italia nel 1977 e si è stabilita a Roma con la famiglia. Ha frequentato prima le scuole francesi e poi quelle italiane. Ha iniziato a scrivere folgorata da scrittori francesi come Sartre e Camus, ma anche da Italo Calvino. I suoi racconti sono stati pubblicati in varie raccolte, tra cui Amori Bicolori (2008) e Italiani per Vocazione (2005).

Laila Wadia è nata a Bombay nel 1966, da genitori indiani seguaci di Zarathustra. E’ arrivata in Italia da adulta e si è stabilita subito a Trieste, dove lavora come collaboratrice esperta di lingua inglese all’università di Trieste. Ha scritto una raccolta di racconti, Il burattinaio e altre storie extra-italiane (2004), e il romanzo Amiche per la Pelle (2007).

Io, a parte quest'antologia e Amori Bicolori, ho letto anche tre romanzi bellissimi che intrecciano l'Italia e il corno d'Africa nella loro narrazione. Ho deciso di parlarvene un po'. Il primo è scritto da una delle quattro autrici di Pecore Nere, si tratta di Oltre Babilonia di Igiaba Scego (Donzelli, €17,50), di cui per altro avevo già parlato in questo blog. Quando ho iniziato a leggere questo libro ero in partenza per Londra. Guarda caso il mio ostello era a Willesden, il quartiere dove è ambientato White Teeth di Zadie Smith (e dove è anche cresciuta). Nella mia mente non potevo fare a meno di fare il paragone: Igiaba Scego è la nostra Zadie Smith! O lo sarà, se preferite. A parte il colore della pelle, tutte e due riempono le loro storie di personaggi dalle geografie più disparate (ma che immagino siano le persone che conoscono e con cui hanno a che fare tutti i giorni), ci si diverte da matti leggendole, ma non a scapito del contenuto, e infilano nelle loro storie tutto quello che le emoziona e le interessa, dalla musica alla letteratura. Non mancano però momenti amari, come la descrizione della Somalia martoriata dalla guerra o dalla crudeltà dei colonizzatori. Ecco un pezzettino del libro, preso quasi a caso, per darvi un'idea del talento della ragazza:

“La Nus-Nus *

C’è qualcosa nella morte che assomiglia all’amore.
Antologia di Spoon River, pagina 103, versione comprata in edicola, allegata a un giornale. Quale? Mar non se lo ricordava più. Testo a fronte. Mar comprava solo poesie con testo a fronte. Rilesse il verso in inglese There is nothing about death like love itself.
Il ritmo era abisso. Come la canna della pistola dentro la bocca di Patricia.
Le faceva paura. Era seduta in mezzo al niente di Villa Borghese, Mar. Intorno i bambini giocavano, le coppiette si baciavano e i tossici speravano di rimediare la loro dose in vena con qualche borseggio sul bus 490.
La vita scorreva fluida intorno a Mar. Il cielo era terso come in certi telefilm tedeschi. Le nuvole distratte. Gli uccelli esitanti. Niente solcava quel blu finzione. Roma sembrava un set cinematografico. Sembrava uno studio della MGM degli anni d’oro. O forse era solo Cinecittà. A ogni angolo, inaspettati, potevano spuntare Visconti, la Magnani, Alberto Sordi. O perché no, il grande Federico Fellini con una Ekberg e una fontana. Con un Mastroianni e una soubrette.Federico Fellini che gira il suo nuovo film con Mar Ribero Martino. Una ragazza nera. Troppo nera. Con una madre bianca, argentina, italiana, portoghese. Una famiglia di errori la sua. Una famiglia di pazzi."

* La <>>, in lingua somala.

Nella prossima puntata, Cristina Ali Farah. :-)

The book to redemption

The Man Asian Literary Prize was awarded to Su Tong’s The Boat to Redemption. Now, you might have never heard of Su Tong, but apparently he’s a bestselling author in China. His novella Raise the Red Lantern was made into an Oscar-nominated movie directed by Zhang Yimou (it’s called Lanterne Rosse in Italian if anybody’s wondering). The Boat to Redemption is set in the period of the Cultural Revolution and it’s about a womaniser who’s banned from his home by the local authorities and starts his redemption by living on a boat (read an excerpt here, it’s really worth it). I’m happy that a book not originally written in English has won the prize and I’m even happier because a Chinese author has won it. I want to see more Chinese names on the shelves of our bookshops!

I didn’t blog the shortlist for the prize (only the longlist and some musings on the prize itself), but there were some interesting pieces in there. Apart from “the Chinese treat” aforementioned, the list was dominated by writers from the Indian subcontinent. The most interesting book, in my opinion, was Residue, written by Kashmiri-born Nitasha Kaul, which explores the evolving relationship between Keya Raina and Leon Ali, two Kashmiris who have never lived in their “homeland” (read excerpts here). Then there’s Omair Ahmad’s Jimmy the Terrorist, about politics in an Indian Muslim community (read an excerpts here), and Siddharth Chowdhury's Day Scholar, which tells of a powerful Delhi property broker and political dealer, who brings his mistresses to the hostel he runs (read excerpts here). The list is completed with The Descartes Highlands by Manila-born Eric Gamalinda, the story of a woman who buys a baby in Manila (read excerpts here).

This prize is three years old and, apart from raising criticism for its geographical definition of Asia, aims to bring Asian literature to the attention of the public. I really hope that some of these books (especially if they are in translation, I can’t really understand which ones are apart from the winner) will come to the attention of the Western readers!

By the way...

Other “Chinese-themed” books I’d like to read: A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo, Waiting by Ha Jin and American-born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang.

Zadie Smith’s new collection of essays is out, it’s called Changing My Mind: Ocassional Essays and I’m very excited to read it. Some people say that she is better as a critic than as a novelist. I'm not sure about that, but she has a sharp mind. Here's an essay called "Speaking in Tongues", based on a lecture that she gave at the New York Public Library in December 2008 and a sneak peek of Zadie's literature criticism.

34. “Due volte” di Jadelin Mabiala Gangbo

Anno di prima pubblicazione: 2009
Genere: romanzo
Paese: Italia

Il libro è edito dalle Edizioni e/o (€16).

Trama: Due gemelli rasta di origine beninese, Daniel e David, crescono in un istituto di suore vicino a Bologna, insieme a compagni di avventure e disavventure dal passato difficili: c’è Pasquale, piccolo camorrista di origine napoletana, che legge poesie e le vuole scrivere sui muri nonostante il divieto delle suore, e poi c’è Agata, che è stata “sputata” dallo zio, o almeno così capisce Daniel. Il tutto ambientato nell’Italia degli anni ottanta, tra una partita a Subbuteo e una gita al negozio di giocattoli per comprare, con i soldi risparmiati, i tanto agognati transformers.

Qualche pensiero: Dalla recensione di Michael Braun della Tageszeitung uscita su Internazionale (n.813, settembre 2009):
“[…] l’autore ha scelto di raccontare la storia con gli occhi e le parole del bimbo di dieci anni, frugando fin troppo nei suoi ricordi. Il risultato è un romanzo dal linguaggio eccessivamente semplice che alla lunga stanca, prolisso in molte descrizioni a scapito dell’intensità di una storia che riesce solo in parte a essere un romanzo di formazione. Bellissimi i ritratti dei due compagni di sventura […]. Dal libro non emerge che il bambino è nero, a parte qualche disquisizione sui capelli. Chi si aspetta un racconto sulla vita di un bambino africano in un paese bianco rimarrà deluso.”

Sono in parte d’accordo con queste critiche al libro: ci sono un paio di cose che non mi hanno convinto e ha ragione Michael Braun a pensare che l’autore avrebbe dovuto lasciare più spazio alle storie dei compagni dei due protagonisti, che sono molto toccanti anche attraverso il filtro dell’ingenuo narratore. Mi è piaciuto, tuttavia, il fatto che queste storie fossero fatte intuire e non raccontate esplicitamente, viste con gli occhi di un bambino che non le capisce fino in fondo o non gli dà troppo peso. Non ci è dato sapere, infatti, chi fosse in realtà lo “sputatore” della bambina Agata, o come un bambino napoletano è finito in un istituto di suore bolognese.

La semplicità del linguaggio non mi ha dato fastidio, anzi; Daniel ha pensieri originali e il modo di vedere le cose di un bambino di dieci anni è sempre interessante e divertente (e Gangbo riesce bene nell’impresa di creare un narratore-bambino, con storpiature di parole e pensieri dissacranti). Tuttavia, i continui riferimenti alle marche di giocattoli o di vestiti che andavano di moda negli anni ottanta alla lunga stancano: forse nei coetanei dell’autore evocheranno anche una forte nostalgia, però nel resto dei lettori (e io ho solo sette anni in meno dell’autore!) servono solo a sottolineare eccessivamente l’ambientazione italiana del libro e “l’italianità” dei due gemelli, che pur essendo di origine africana sono culturalmente italiani. David e Daniel sono per altro un ibrido: 100 % italiani ma anche africani (con le seconde generazioni della migrazione la matematica non funziona). L’influenza che ha la cultura rastafari trasmessagli dal padre, che loro credono in prigione, c’è, ma è una cosa che tengono per sé. Daniel e David sono alla ricerca del “cuore nero”, anche se non sanno bene che cosa sia, e ricordano con nostalgia quando il papà gli faceva ascoltare la musica di Bob Marley e Linton Kwesi Johnson, raccontandogli della corruzione di Babilonia. In realtà, il fatto che i due bambini siano neri non influisce molto sulla storia, a parte, appunto, qualche disquisizione sui capelli. Forse l’autore ha cercato di spiegarci che ci possono essere storie con protagonisti appartenenti a minoranze senza che queste storie vertano per forza sul dilemma dell’identità o sull’avversione per il diverso*. D'altronde, il fatto che i due gemellini siano di origine beninese, e non congolese come l'autore, avvalora la tesi che l'etnicità non sia fondamentale all'interno della storia. L’autore, infatti, rigetta l’etichetta di “scrittore migrante” e preferisce quella più semplice e “non ghettizzata” di scrittore (vedi quest’intervista).

Detto questo, mi è sembrato che la mancanza di riflessioni da parte del narratore-bambino su questi temi o la mancanza di reazioni e giudizi sulle origini africane dei bambini togliesse autenticità alla storia. A togliere ulteriore autenticità alla storia, a mio parere, è l'improbabile religione dei gemelli, il rastafarianesimo.

In conclusione, ho trovato stimolante la storia, ma avrei accantonato qualche marachella probabilmente autobiografica, che oltretutto rischia di ridurre il libro ad una mera serie di episodi, e sviluppato maggiormente le storie di vita dei bambini dell'istituto.

Sull’autore: Jadelin Mabiala Gangbo è nato nel 1976 nella Repubblica Popolare del Congo ed è in Italia da quando aveva quattro anni. Cresciuto tra Imola e Bologna, ora vive a Londra. Ha pubblicato i romanzi Verso la Notte Bakonga (1999) e Rometta e Giulieo (2001), versione contemporanea della tragedia di Shakespeare con protagonisti una giovane studentessa e un consegnapizze cinese.

* Ricordo di aver riflettuto su questa possibilità guardando Radiance di Rachel Perkins, un film australiano con tre protagoniste aborigene.

33. “The Garden Party and Other Stories” by Katherine Mansfield

Year of first publication: 1922
Genre: collection of short stories
Country: New Zealand

You can read all the short stories in the collection on the web, at this link.

In italiano si può trovare: Tutti i racconti di Katherine Mansfield, edito da Mondadori (2006), € 18 oppure Tutti i racconti edito dalla Newton Compton (2008), € 7.

What it’s all about: This is a collection of fifteen short stories, most of which deal with everyday tasks or uneventful things. The beauty of the stories lies in the description of the inner life of the characters, from the delicate Laura of “The Garden Party” who is shocked by the death of a man down the street to Linda of “At the Bay”, who is bored with domestic life in provincial New Zealand but probably disapproves of different lifestyles, such as that of Mrs Harry Kember, who’s considered a scandal in town for her peculiar behaviour with both men and women.

Some thoughts: In the front cover of this book (a Penguin edition) there is a painting by Vanessa Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf and a member of the Bloomsbury group. Virginia Woolf was in fact a friend of the author and one of the first people to recognize her talent. She published some of her work and extolled "the only writing I have ever been jealous of”. Another connection might be that Vanessa Bell led, to some extent, a bohemian life (she had an open marriage ante litteram), which is something Mansfield experienced as well. Woolf and Mansfield are considered two of the best women writers of their time, the former for her wonderful novels and the latter for her beautifully-written short stories.

As it usually happens, in this collection there are bad stories and good stories. I had already read four of these stories for a course on New Zealand literature and rereading them was like meeting with old friends. Some of the other stories were almost inconsistent, easy to read but also easy to forget. I’ll write about the two I liked the most.

In the first one, “At the Bay”, we are introduced to New Zealand as if reaching the shore on a ship: bungalows, paddocks, bush-covered hills, silvery, fluffy toi-toi and, of course, a flock of sheep are in sight. There are no doubts: we are in “the land of the long white cloud”. The sky is ‘bright, pure blue’ and the sea is ‘leaping, glittering, […] so bright it made one’s eyes ache to look at it’. The contrast with an English landscape is evident and appalling. The story is mostly about gender relationships: Stanley is the man of the house and gives for granted that women should serve him and look that his walking-stick is not lost, but then worries all day because he didn’t say goodbye to his wife before leaving home in the morning. His wife Linda, instead, is looking for something more than just domestic life. She becomes infatuated with Jonathan, who’s fond of music and books. Mansfield’s feelings about life in New Zealand are summarized in his words: ‘And all the while I’m thinking, like that moth, or that butterfly, or whatever it is, “The shortness of life! The shortness of life!” I’ve only one night and or one day, and there’s this vast dangerous garden, waiting out there, undiscovered, unexplored’. They’re both probably bored with the provinciality of life in New Zealand. Then there’s Beryl, the unmarried aunt, who goes swimming with a Mrs Harry Kember, whose behaviour borders on homosexuality (she pays a compliment to Beryl for her beauty, she behaves as if she were a man, she smokes, plays bridge and, most important of them all, she has an open relationship with her much-younger husband). The part with the children playing a game of cards until dusk reminds me of some short stories by Janet Frame, another New Zealander who liked to write about her childhood memories. Another thing that Mansfield has in common with Janet Frame is the funny distortion of the English language that they both put in the mouth of their characters: ‘a jug of what the lady-help called “Limmonadear”’ or ‘a bee’s not an animal, it’s a hinseck’ (uttered by one of the children) are just some examples of it.

The second story, “The Garden Party” is maybe her best one. The main character is Laura Sheridan who, like Clarissa Dalloway, is preparing for a party. Even the opening line, ‘And after all the weather was ideal’, reminds me of Woolf’s book, which begins with ‘Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself’. It’s the same way of throwing us immediately into a world that already existed before the beginning of the story: no Dickens-style introductions and no three-page long descriptions of the characters. The main concern of “The Garden Party” is the social-class divide: Laura and her family learn that a man has died down the street, just before their garden party is to be started. He belongs to another class and lives in an unhealthy, smelly ‘poky, little hole’, where Laura and her sisters are forbidden to go. Unlike her mother, Laura claims that she doesn’t care for class distinctions (it sounds like Miss Quested from A Passage to India when she says she wants to see ‘The real India'). She would like to cancel the party but her family doesn’t agree, so she finally decides to visit the family of the deceased and bring them a basket of spare sandwiches. It’s only when Laura is in the house with the mourning women that she realizes that it was not really a good idea and that class distinctions exist in spite of her. New Zealand’s society, as portrayed by Mansfield in these stories, is not dissimilar from English society: the upper middle-class enjoys drinking tea and having garden parties with marquees, but they’re completely disconnected to common workmen.

Some of Mansfield's longer stories (“At the Bay”, for instance) read like section of novels, because the characters outgrow the short-story format and could easily fit in a novel. I’m not sure whether this is good or bad, but I enjoyed “At the Bay” all the same. Another reason why some people dislike Mansfield’s fiction is that sometimes the stories have abrupt endings and no resolution (in “The Voyage” for instance, where a young girl and her grandmother experience a night on a boat): nothing of importance occurs and all the story is about small incidents.

“The Garden Party” is more self-contained and yet so much detail is crammed into one single short story - sibling rivalries, the class divide, the opposition between the inner life of Laura and her outer, more respectable self (also reminiscent of Mrs Dalloway’s introspection), the reality of death happening on your doorstep (which is something recurrent in Mansfield’s stories, it’s also the main theme of “The Stranger”, another piece of good work) - to me it's the flawless short story.

About the author: Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is considered one of the most accomplished short story writers of her time. She was born in Wellington, New Zealand, into a prominent colonial family. She went to England to finish her education and, after having journeyed across continental Europe for a few years, she went back to New Zealand. However, she found her native country terribly provincial and headed again for London. In London she led a bohemian life, had lesbian love affairs, got pregnant out of wedlock and married a man whom she left the same evening and finally had a miscarriage. Her first book, In a German Pension, was published in 1911. In 1912 she began to write for Rhythm, edited by John Middleton Murry, whom she later married. She broadened her literary acquaintances, encountering modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf with whom she became close friends. With the publication of Prelude in 1916 (which was requested by Virginia and Leonard Woolf to be published for their Hogarth Press) she showed herself to be master of her own style. She contracted tuberculosis in 1917 and from that time led a wandering life in search of health, even though she kept writing short stories almost until her death in 1923. Before dying she published Bliss (1921) and The Garden Party (1922). Most of her work was still unpublished at the time of her death, so her husband took on the task of publishing her works.

By the way, I wrote a post on New Zealand literature (in Italian) just a few days ago.
For a series of articles on the best short story writers of world literature (including Franz Kafza, Julio Cortazar and, of course, Katherine Mansfield) follow this link.
The piece on K.M. also reflects on the fact that she wrote wonderful short stories as well as lousy ones.

Guardian's First Book Award 2009 - shortlist

• The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey (UK): also shortlisted for the Orange Prize and longlisted for the Booker Prize, it’s the story of an architect whose memories are being lost because of Alzheimer.
• The Selected Works of TS Spivet by Reif Larsen (USA): About a genius 12-year-old cartographer from Montana. Much of its story is told in the maps and diagrams supposedly drawn in the margins by Spivet.
• The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton (New Zealand): two linked narrative threads, one set in a girls' school in the aftermath of a pupil-teacher affair and the other in a drama school where details of the affair are used for the end-of-year production.
• An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe): 13 short stories that show different aspects of Zimbabwean life from the shanty towns to the mansions but which also have universal resonances such as betrayal.
• A Swamp Full of Dollars by Michael Peel: the chaotic story of Nigeria and its oil written by a corrispondent of the Financial Times.

Last year’s winner was a non-fiction book, Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise (read this post). Mark Brown, The Guardian’s art correspondent, claims that in this year’s shortlist, fiction is resurgent.

Note:

The Guardian First Book Award is open to all first-time authors writing in English, or translated into English, across all genres.
The fact that, for the sake of diversity, there should be some non-fiction books, at least a collection of short stories or a poetry book is always underlined by the commentators of the shortlist. The fact that every now and then there should be a translated book in the shortlist is never mentioned. I wonder if some translated books enter the competition at all and if the jury (usually very British) even takes them in some consideration.

For the longlist of this year’s Guardian First Book Award, click here.

For posts covering last year’s award, click here and here.

By the way, this month the Guardian book culb has Kiran Desai's Inheritance of Loss as its choice! Click here to read how much Sam Jordison struggled with this novel and here to read John Mullan talking about divisions in the novel.

32. “Journal d’Hirondelle” by Amélie Nothomb

Year of first publication: 2006
Genre: novel
Country: the novel is set in France, but the author is from Belgium

In italiano: Diario di Rondine di Amélie Nothom, pubblicato da Voland nella collana Amazzoni (2006), €12,50

As far as I know, this book hasn’t been translated into English. I can’t help saying once again that they should translate more literature into English, at least from European languages.

Plot: A man decides to take up a job as a hit man after a love story gone wrong which left him unable to feel any emotion. He’s the best of killers: cold-blooded and meticulous. One day he’s hired to kill a Minister and his family, but when he enters the house the man’s daughter is about to kill her father because he has read her diary. Moved by the encounter with the girl, who he was obliged to kill nontheless, he decides not to hand in the diary she was keeping.

Some thoughts: This is a very short novel, only 92 pages. The style is crude, almost grotesque, and the characters are not fully introduced. In fact they hardly have names or a biography. The explanation is probably that the main character is everyman, potentially the reader himself after a failed love story. Amélie Nothomb is usually praised for the psychological depth of her novels: Journal d’Hirondelle (“diary of a swallow”) describes how a person would react if he/she is deprived of all emotions. It is a weird novel, I don’t know if all Nothomb’s novels are like this, but the situation and the plot twist are very unusual. She comes to me as an experimental writer more than a good story teller (most contemporary Anglophone or Italian writers are good story tellers but don’t experiment much with literature in the way that Nothomb does with this book). She reminds me of Frédéric Beigbeder* because of her crude minimalist style, her anecdotes and wittiness, but also because of her permanent resolution to stupefy and challenge the reader.

About the author: Amélie Nothomb was born in 1967 in Japan into an aristocratic family of Belgian diplomats and politicians. She has also lived in China, New York, Bangladesh, Burma and Laos. The itinerant life of her parents didn’t have a positive influence on her upbringing and she lived the distance from Japan almost as an exile. She didn’t live in Europe until she was 17, when she moved to Brussels. After some family tensions, she returned to Japan to work in a Japanese company. She remained there one year and after this disastrous experience she moved again to Belgium. Her first novel, Hygiène de l'assassin (The Hygiene of the Assassin in English) was published in 1992. Since then, she has published roughly one novel per year. Her most famous works are probably the autobiographical novels Métaphysique des Tubes (2000, strangely translated as The Character of Rain), which details her Japanese childhood, and Stupeur et Tremblements (1999, translated as Fear and Trembling in English), which recounts her experience as a translator in a Japanese company.

* I just read by coincidence that yesterday Frédéric Beigbeder was awarded the Renaudot prize, one of the most important literary prizes in France, for his novel Un Roman Français (2009). Frédéric Beigbeder is a controversial writer in France, a sort of “enfant terrible, especially because of the depiction of drug abuse in his books (he admits that his characters are often autobiographical). In 2008, he was arrested for sniffing cocaine on the hood of a car one. In his new novel he takes his revenge on his prosecutor. However, the four offending pages disappeared from the book between the time some copies were sent to the press and the publication of the novel. Some say this was a marketing ploy, since Beigbeder used to work in advertising.