Autoportrait

In this brilliant and sobering self-portrait, Édouard Levé hides nothing from his readers, setting out his entire life, more or less at random, in a string of declarative sentences.

Autoportrait is a physical, psychological, sexual, political, and philosophical triumph. Beyond "sincerity," Levé works toward an objectivity so radical it could pass for crudeness, triviality, even banality: the author has stripped himself bare. With the force of a set of maxims or morals, Levé's prose seems a...