Thomas Reverdy

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Thomas B. Reverdy (2018)

Thomas B. Reverdy (* 1974 ) is a French writer . He has received several awards for his novels , including the Prix ​​François-Mauriac , the Prix ​​des Libraires and the Prix ​​Interallié .

Life

Thomas Reverdy had, in his own words, “a happy childhood including a humanistic, educational upbringing”. His mother, an economist at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers , died when he was 19 years old. While studying modern literature, he worked on La Femelle du requin , a literary magazine from the University of Paris III . He graduated in 2000. He then became a high school teacher in Seine-Saint-Denis . He lives in Paris .

Reverdy's first three novels La Montée des eaux (2003), Le Ciel pour mémoire (2005) and Les Derniers Feux (2008) form a cycle on the themes of memory, grief and friendship, which was primarily autobiographical . With the following novel L'Envers du monde (2010), a New York novel set against the backdrop of the terrorist attacks at Ground Zero , he turned away from his own biography and turned to the novel noir , a genre of French crime fiction who can also be attributed to the following novels. Les Évaporés (2013) was made in Japan , where Reverdy worked from January to August 2012 in the French artist residence Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto . Il était une ville (2015) takes place in Detroit against the backdrop of the American financial crisis .

The fugitives

Reverdy's first novel, translated into German, Die Verfluchtierter , takes up the theme of the “Johatsu”, Japanese people who disappear from one day to the next and live a shadowy existence on the fringes of society, often out of shame and to spare their relatives a social disgrace. Four lifelines cross in the novel, that of the stockbroker Kaze, who goes into hiding when he is targeted by the yakuza , that of the young Akainu, who lives on the street after losing his family in the tsunami as a result of the Tōhoku earthquake , that of the Japanese Yukiko, who returns home after the failed dream of an actress in Los Angeles to look for her father, and that of the American private detective and poet Richard B., who is unhappy in love with Yukiko and experiences Japan as a completely alien culture to him.

The figure of Richard B. is based on the American writer Richard Brautigan , who has traveled to Japan several times and was married to a Japanese woman. His poems are repeatedly mounted in the novel as thoughts of the character in the novel . The novel thus merges two time levels, that of the present Japan after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima with the Japan bridal goose more than a generation before. According to Christoph Vormweg, the result is “a kaleidoscope of provocative, very different images of a rich, proud country that has suddenly lost all security and lives under the sign of fear.” tell a tricky love story, bring a distant country closer, and: convince literarily with finely honed periods and poetically subtle interjections ”. Brigitte Große received the Hamburg Prize for Literary Translations for her translation .

Publications

  • 2003: La Montée des eaux , Seuil.
  • 2005: Le Ciel pour mémoire , Seuil.
  • 2008: Les Derniers Feux , Seuil.
  • 2008: Le Lycée de nos Rêves , Hachette Littérature (together with Cyril Delhay).
  • 2009: Collection irraisonnée de préfaces à des livres fétiches , Intervalles, (editor, together with Martin Page).
  • 2010: L'Envers du monde , Seuil.
  • 2013: Les Évaporés , Flammarion .
  • 2015: Il était une ville , Flammarion.
    • German: Once upon a time there was a city . Translated from the French by Brigitte Große. Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-8270-1345-3 .
  • 2017: Jardin colonial , Flammarion (together with Sylvain Venayre).
  • 2018: L'Hiver du mécontentement , Flammarion.

Awards

  • 2008: Prix Valery-Larbaud for Les Derniers Feux
  • 2011: Prix ​​François-Mauriac for L'Envers du monde
  • 2013: Grand prix Thyde-Monnier de la Société des gens de lettres for Les Évaporés
  • 2014: Prix Joseph-Kessel for Les Évaporés
  • 2015: Prix Escale du livre for Il était une ville
  • 2016: Prix ​​des Libraires for Il était une ville
  • 2018: Prix ​​Interallié for L'Hiver du mécontentement

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Thomas Reverdy at Piper Verlag .
  2. ↑ a b biography on the website of Thomas B. Reverdy.
  3. ↑ Thomas Reverdy at France Inter .
  4. ↑ Christoph Vormweg: On the trail of the Japanese who went into hiding . In: Deutschlandfunk from June 19, 2016.
  5. ↑ Brigitte Große ( Memento of the original from September 18, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.literaturpreise-hamburg.de archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at Literaturpreise-Hamburg.de.
  6. ^ Prix ​​Valery-Larbaud on the website of the city of Vichy .
  7. ^ Prix ​​François Mauriac on the website of the Académie française .
  8. ↑ Grand Prix Thyde Monnier de la SGDL on the website of the Société des gens de lettres.
  9. ^ Grégoire Leménager: Le prix Joseph-Kessel pour Thomas B. Reverdy . In: Le Nouvel Observateur of June 9, 2014.
  10. ↑ Les laureats on the website of the Prix Escale du livre.
  11. ^ Lauréat du Prix des Libraires 2016: Thomas Reverdy . On the website of the Prix ​​des Libraires .
personal data
SURNAME Reverdy, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reverdy, Thomas B.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French author
DATE OF BIRTH 1974