The Emperor, C'est Moi

Hugo Horiot is in love with wheels and all that cranks or turns. He is obsessed with the otherworldly language of pipes—they run, he imagines, from his family home to the center of the earth. He causes endless trouble at home and hates school. He muses: “I dream asleep, I dream awake”—but he dreams so hard he shuts out the world with reveries that are not just curious but dangerous and painful too. School is a prison he must escape, his teachers oppressors, and his classmates “a band of jol...