Discreetly, and with a certain parsimony in his publications, the Briton Adam Thirlwell has established himself as one of the literary geniuses of the early 21st century.e century.
In 2004, his madness Policy earned him consideration as one of the future great British authors by the magazine Grant (which rains or shines on the designation of the great hopes of literature). A talent widely confirmed by The Escape (2009) et Candid and lustful (2016).
As well as with the prodigious The Multiple Book (2013) where he criticizes and imaginatively dissects Borges, Kafka, Sterne and Nabokov. The author returns to us with a strange object called The future futurea kind of uchrony where temporalities merge at a point, which makes it more of an achrony: a young 19-year-old woman is the target of a form of revenge porn (literary) and responds with a feminist literary salon that challenges the prevailing machismo.
Except that all this takes place at a time which resembles the Ancien Régime, where we come across avatars of Beaumarchais or Napoleon but where we can travel to the Moon or meet extraterrestrials. Basically, pretty much anything as long as it's awesome. And it is.
As always, Thirlwell juggles registers as he kneads time (Céline falls asleep under the Ancien Régime and wakes up in 2051): with a fantasy and a mischief that is as much reminiscent of Jules Verne as of Jonathan Swift and perhaps be some of the follies of a Will Self twisting reality with the stroke of a pen (Vice-Versa, My Idea of Pleasure, The Great Apes or This is how the dead live to name just a few), for this propensity to make us embrace the fantastic as well as the ordinary. It is impossible to say good things about this book in its French version without saluting the always remarkable work of Nicolas Richard, one of the great language translators of current literature, in the service of one of its most precious authors.
The future future – Adam Thirlwell, Olivier editions, 320 pp., €24.
France
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