In the Time of the Blue Ball

by Manuela Draeger

Overview

Fiction. Translated from the French by Brian Evenson. "With the calm strangeness of dreams, and humor deepened by a hint of melancholy, these wonderful stories fool around on the frontiers of the imagination. All musical dogs, woolly crabs, children and other detectives of the not-yet-invented should own this book."—Shelley Jackson

"Humane, impossible, homely and alien, Draeger's extraordinary stories are as close to dreams as fiction can be."—China Miéville

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780984469338
Publisher:	Dorothy, a publishing project
Publication date:	11/01/2011
Edition description:	Translatio
Pages:	134
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Manuela Draeger belongs to a community of imaginary authors. Since 2002, she has published novels for adolescents.

Antoine Volodine (born 1950) is the pseudonym of a French writer. One of his other pseudonyms is Manuela Draeger.

Editorial Reviews

Draeger (the pseudonym of a French writer) populates this postapocalyptic world with gleefully surreal creatures and ideas. In three short stories with a distinct Murakami vibe, hapless investigator Bobby Potemkine threads his way through his city’s meteor-shredded ruins to find out which of several women named Lili has really invented fire, what to do about an angry noodle named Auguste Diodon, and how to rescue the many baby pelicans that litter the roads. Every page introduces another curiosity in Draeger’s cabinet of wonders. Bobby’s dog, Djinn, marries “an immense polar ratinette,” an animal with the physique of a carpet, and he plays the nanoctiluphe, an instrument which, “as everybody knows, possesses rosewood cranks and nickel-plated pistons.” Bobby’s resignation sometimes rises to the status of philosophy, as when he revises his view of a child-eating tiger after remembering that Djinn once accidentally ingested a musically talented fly: “It can happen to anyone,” he muses, “to be eaten by someone, or to eat someone.” Fans of tightly plotted novels may chafe, but readers with a taste for the eccentric will discover a great many unexpected literary pleasures. Ages 12–up. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"In three

short stories with a distinct Murakami

vibe, hapless investigator Bobby

Potemkine threads his way

through his city's meteor-shredded

ruins to find out which of several

women named Lili has really invented

fire, what to do about an

angry noodle named Auguste Diodon,

and how to rescue the many baby

pelicans that litter the roads. Every

page introduces another

curiosity in Draeger's cabinet of

wonders."—Publishers

Weekly

"The stories

are dreamlike, cozy and creepy

and wistful all at once. They remind me

of Tove Jansson's

Moomintroll stories, if the

Moomin adventures unrolled against a

backdrop of subtle bleakness.

Everything's happy, yet you feel like

everything is destroyed. They also

remind me of Chagall's

paintings, if the paintings were hanging

in a bomb shelter."—sofia

samatar

"Though it all

sounds so cute and

gimmicky, there is nothing cloying

about it. These are bizarre, touching,

delightful..."—PANK

From the Publisher