We Monks and Soldiers

by Lutz Bassmann, Jordan Stump (Translator), Antoine Volodine

Overview

From one of the most original French writers of our day comes a mysterious, prismatic, and at times profoundly sad reflection on humanity in its darker moments—one of which may very well be our own. In a collection of fictions that blur distinctions between dreaming and waking reality, Lutz Bassmann sets off a series of echoes—the “entrevoutes” that conduct us from one world to another in a journey as viscerally powerful as it is intellectually heady.  While humanity seems to be fading around them, the members of a shadowy organization are doing their inadequate best to assist those experiencing their last moments. From a soldier-monk exorcising what seem to be spirits (but are they?) from an abandoned house, to a spy executing a mission whose meaning eludes him, to characters exploring cells, wandering through ruins, confronting political dissent and persecution, encountering—perhaps—the spirits once exorcised, these stories conduct us through a world at once ambiguous and sharply observed. This remarkable work, in Jordan Stump’s superb translation, offers readers a thrilling entry into Bassmann’s numinous world.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803244641
Publisher:	UNP - Nebraska Paperback
Publication date:	09/01/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Lutz Bassmann belongs to a community of imaginary authors invented, championed, and literarily realized by Antoine Volodine, a French writer of Slavic origins born in 1950. Volodine’s many celebrated, category-defying works include the award-winning Minor Angels (Nebraska, 2004), which blends science fiction, Tibetan myth, a ludic approach to writing, and a profound humanistic idealism. Jordan Stump is a professor of French at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He is the author of The Other Book (Nebraska, 2011), has translated numerous texts, including Minor Angels, and was awarded the French-American Foundation’s translation prize and the Prix Médicis in 2014.

Editorial Reviews

Written in a tersely descriptive prose appropriate for its grim context, this interconnected series of stories by Bassmann (a pseudonym for the French writer Antoine Volodine), is set in an indeterminate future when the human race is dying out, and the Organization—run by remnants of the Communist Party—is sending out trained monks and soldiers to assist anyone about to cross the threshold between life and death. Despite this intriguing premise, a leaden monotony quickly sets in and rarely abates, though Bassmann manages to conjure both disarmingly tender and decidedly odd moments along the way. In “An Exorcism Beside the Sea,” a monk/soldier sent to exorcise the demons from a house finds his resolve is no match for his memories when he finally encounters what is hiding inside. A soldier, in “Crisis at the Tong Fong Hotel,” discovers that the little girl he tries to save from a burning building may actually be “a strange spider.” The post-human future is well-trod territory in speculative fiction, and the element of surprise is needed to keep it fresh. Unfortunately, there’s not enough of that to save Bassmann’s latest (after Minor Angels, as Volodine) from its own portentous and derivative devices. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

A continually changing, continually new poetic force.”—Christophe Kantcheff, Politis

— Christophe Kantcheff

Politis

Between a fragile lyricism and an almost silent poetic expression of an absolute, inevitable devastation.”—Hugo Pradelle, La Quinzaine Littéraire

— Hugo Pradelle

La Quinzaine Litt�raire

"Vividly imagined, thought provoking and spare, this is an unusual collection . . . worth searching out."—Sandy Amazeen, Monsters and Critics

— Sandy Amazeen

Monsters and Critics

Between a fragile lyricism and an almost silent poetic expression of an absolute, inevitable devastation.”—Hugo Pradelle, La Quinzaine Littéraire

— Hugo Pradelle

La Quinzaine Litteraire

A cold-eyed rebuke to those who complain of the lack of inventiveness of French writers.”—Jean-Maurice de Montrémy

Jean-Maurice de Montr�my

"Vividly imagined, thought provoking and spare, this is an unusual collection . . . worth searching out."—Sandy Amazeen, Monsters and Critics

Monsters and Critics - Sandy Amazeen

A continually changing, continually new poetic force.”—Christophe Kantcheff, Politis

Politis - Christophe Kantcheff

Between a fragile lyricism and an almost silent poetic expression of an absolute, inevitable devastation.”—Hugo Pradelle, La Quinzaine Littéraire

La Quinzaine Litteraire - Hugo Pradelle

A cold-eyed rebuke to those who complain of the lack of inventiveness of French writers.”—Jean-Maurice de Montrémy

Jean-Maurice de Montremy

A cold-eyed rebuke to those who complain of the lack of inventiveness of French writers.”—Jean-Maurice de Montrémy

Jean-Maurice de Montrémy