Privy Portrait |
|
| Author:
| Benoziglio, Jean-Luc |
| Translator:
| Lewis, Tess |
| Series title: | The French List Ser. |
| ISBN: | 978-0-85742-166-1 |
| Publication Date: | Sep 2014 |
| Publisher: | Seagull Books
|
| Book Format: | Hardback |
| List Price: | USD $24.00 |
Book Description:
|
Abandoned by his wife and young daughter, without work or prospects and blind in one eye, the narrator of
Privy Portrait moves into a minuscule apartment with his only inheritance--a 25-volume encyclopedia, which becomes a cause of war between him and his vulgar, narrow-minded, racist and authoritarian neighbours, the Shritzkys. Because he has no space for the encyclopedia in his room, he stores it in the communal toilet. It is also the only place he can find refuge from...
More DescriptionAbandoned by his wife and young daughter, without work or prospects and blind in one eye, the narrator of Privy Portrait moves into a minuscule apartment with his only inheritance--a 25-volume encyclopedia, which becomes a cause of war between him and his vulgar, narrow-minded, racist and authoritarian neighbours, the Shritzkys. Because he has no space for the encyclopedia in his room, he stores it in the communal toilet. It is also the only place he can find refuge from his neighbours’ blaring television and barricades himself in it to read his encyclopedia, much to the distress of all the residents of the building.
Amusing as it is devastating,
Privy Portrait is the monologue of a man, disoriented by a gaping void--his father never spoke to him of his origins--suffering probably from cancer, recounting the final foundering of his own sanity and his life. In this buffoonish, even grotesque, yet profoundly pitiful man and through his voice--a blend of disappointed idealism, dark humour and vulnerability--Jean-Luc Benoziglio explores weighty themes with slyness and a light touch without ever sacrificing their gravity: the roles of family, history and memory in one’s interior life, one’s moral responsibility towards others, the Holocaust observed from a position of safety and, above all, the fragility of personal identity.