Redemption     by Chantal Chawaf, Translated by Monique F. Nagem Original title: Rédemption Original language: French Published by Dalkey Archive Press Pub. Date: September 1, 1992 Format: Cloth, 97 pages Dimensions: (in inches): 0.51 x 8.82 x 5.76 ISBN: 1564780031 Edition: 1st Edition List Price: $19.95 buy now directly from the publisher Free Shipping Worldwide Published by Dalkey Archive Press Pub. Date: 1992 Pub. Place: UK List Price: £13.95 Not available for ordering

In Redemption French feminist writer Chantal Chawaf explores the dark paths of madness and sadism, where sexuality evokes cannibalism and vampirism. The language of the body and the body of language are stripped naked in Chawaf's violently beautiful prose as she mounts this terrorist attack on the age-old theme of redemption through love.

The novel was partly inspired by the author's visits to Canada and the United States over a period of six years. It is on this vast American continent, whose wild and tameless beauty Chawaf brilliantl y evokes, that Charles de Roquemont, the protagonist of the novel, savagely kills his lover, Esther, in a fit of impotent madness. A few years later, back in Paris, Charles's sexual instincts are reawakened by a screenwriter, Olga Vassilieff, whom he meet s one sultry summer night in Monceau Park.

The plot, however, is not Chawaf's only concern. As in her other novels, Chawaf manipulates, kneads, impales, and honeycombs her language to create a masterful allegory of her literary theories and linguistic conc epts. The result is a novel that is both cerebral and sensual, both intellectual and visceral.

"To summarize the plot does not do justice to this book which derives its power from a dazzling description of madness. . . . Its narrative is breathless, obsessive, lyrical and brutal."—Le Monde

"Chantal Chawaf has invented a style that resembles no other, a passionate style that attests to the uniqueness of a great writer."—Le Provencal

"She is often interminable, privileging words rather than syntax. The novelist does not recoil from endless enumerations. Her metaphors know no laws. . . . The writing of a maenad."—Quinzaine litteraire

"The flow and metaphors are as compelling and powerful as the passionate love and hate, pain and pleasure, and innocence and guilt of which she writes. Redemption is an intellectual and visceral novel that can be read on several levels and whose language is more important than plot. Its brutal depiction of the human condition cannot be taken lightly, but the masterful play o f language can be admired and enjoyed."—Library Journal

"Mind-bending. . . . Chawaf exhibits a dazzling complexity and poetic brilliance. . . . Chawaf's involvement with aspects of current literary theory endows her writing with a provocative ability tha t may find favor with an audience craving high-intensity fiction."—Booklist

---Yves Navarre, Our Share of Time

"When it happens you don't expect it. You don't expect anything anymore. You lose your head for just a second and someone walks into your lif e, turns it upside down, tenderly, brutally, making a place for himself. Even before anything has happened it's already too late. You can't tell who is choosing whom, when, how, why. You only know these things later when everything is over and each person holds the other accountable for what has gone on."

These opening lines from Our Share of Time begin a story concerned with the impossibility of sustaining love, or even understanding how and why it started.

In this diarylike reminiscence, Pierre Forgue, a Parisian school teacher, offers us an apologia for his past and present life as well as a bleak picture of his future. Moving between his Paris apartment and his summer cottage in Peyroc, he vacillates between love and indifference, between Duck (the yo ung man who casually enters his life and who callously departs) and the rest of the world, between lost youth and approaching middle age.

His is the universal midlife crisis accentuated by the presence of Duck, the now-you-see-him-now-you-don't young and h andsome intruder who brings both happiness and misery. This novel, about the difficulty of maintaining lasting relationships, succeeds by the painstaking honesty with which Yves Navarre records events whose "ending is happy, painful, and sweet."

"Our Share of Time is among the most moving stories of our time, revealing both the pain and joy that is 'l'amour toujours.'"—Washington Blade

"A universally appealing tale about the difficulty of finding and keeping relationships."—Newsday

"In this, as in his other novels dealing with gays, Navarre renders a view of love that is both dire and compelling."—Publishers Weekly

"This is a sensitive evocation according to E. M. Forster's suggestion that the novel reveal 'the secret life'; here, a painful rendering of a foredoomed love, effective and affecting."—American Book Review

"Our Share of Time rightly suggests that 'our efforts to bring things within our grasp, within our expectations' destroy us and yet, at the same time, define us as human. The novel pos es ultimate questions; it is a searing, soaring exploration of the way we are."—Hollins Critic

"The novel [possesses] a hip grace and an urban ambiance that's been compared with 'Breakfast at Tiffany's.' . . . Anyone interested in romance will find part of themselves in this fresh and subtly evocative novel."—Minnesota Daily

"Yves Navarre is a lively and thought-provoking writer, and Our Share of Time, the third of his novels to appear in English, deserves a large readership in America."—Washington Times