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| We Monks and Soldiers
ISBN: 9780803244641
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / University of Nebraska Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Literature;
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.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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. |
