Pigeon Post

by Dumitru Tsepeneag, Jane Kuntz (Translator)

Overview

Here is a book about a man, supposedly a writer, who tries to write a novel, because he promised his readers he would. But he doesn’t have anything to say. He keeps erasing what he writes, and rewriting it, without having the slightest idea where he’s going with it. Soon enough he realizes that looking out of the window, sitting in front of his typewriter, describing anything and everything, is not enough to write a novel. His three friends, Edmond, Edgar, and Édouard, will aid him in his task . . . Pigeon Post will be the second book Dalkey Archive has published by the Romanian writer Dumitru Tsepeneag (after the critically acclaimed Vain Art of the Fugue), and we will be publishing more of his works in the years to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564785169
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	10/01/2008
Series:	Eastern European Literature Series
Pages:	159
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Dumitru Tsepeneag is one of the most innovative Romanian writers of the second half of the twentieth century. In 1975, while he was in France, his citizenship was revoked by Ceaușescu, and he was forced into exile. In the 1980s, he started to write in French. He returned to his native language after the Ceaușescu regime ended, but continues to write in his adopted language as well.

Jane Kuntz has translated Everyday Life and The Power of Flies by Lydie Salvayre, Hotel Crystal by Olivier Rolin, Pigeon Post by Dumitru Tsepeneag, and Hoppla! 1 2 3 and Making a Novel by Gerard Gavarry, all of which are available from Dalkey Archive Press.

Editorial Reviews

accomplished and delirious comic novel' - James Womack, Times Literary Supplement

Dalkey Archive Press

From the Publisher

A Romanian novelist writing in French (here newly translated into English) creates in this fragmentary, meandering work the charmingly sad tale of a solitary writer, Ed, as he attempts to make sense of his memories. From his Parisian apartment, Ed observes the comings and goings of pigeons and neighbors, such as the widow Maryse and her Pekinese, all the while relishing his solitude and sifting through the "raw material" of his sensations and memories. He resolves to write a novel by introducing anecdotes helter-skelter and enlisting the ideas of his three childhood friends named, suspiciously, Edmund, Edgar and Edward. From the responses and criticism of these trusty alter-egos, Ed constructs a kind of journal of spontaneous writing centered on his upbringing in Agen and a present flirtation with an older man who plays chess in a café for a living. Delighting in his gleeful prevarication, the narrator opens himself to witty self-scrutiny and invites the reader to participate in his inventive, surreal literary feast.
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