fiction - Anastasia Lester Literary Agency - Free

FICTIONØ The novelist embarks us on a touching saga, and considers subjects like bearing witness to the past,narratives, genealogy, the difficulty of telling everything, the need to choose… creating a clever reflectionof her own profession as a novelist.Nancy Huston fans will be pleased to recognize the novelist’s thoughtful style and familiar polyphony(weaving several languages, including English and Gaelic Qubecois, into the French canvas).On a hospital bed, the Québecois Milo Noirlac is gradually losing his grip on life. At his bedside, theNew York- based Argentinean director Paul Schwarz is still dreaming of a final project for them to do together: afilm they would co-write that would be based on Milo’s incredible life story. Set to music, the film would sing ofhis roots, which were first erased, then gradually recomposed. It would follow three strands of his life, whichincluded war and exile, and bring us to the heart of the unresolvable tension between the Old World and theNew, and between the need to remember and to bear witness and the dream of starting over.Taking a musical concept as her starting point, as she often does, Nancy Huston follows three vastlydifferent fates that are nevertheless bound by blood ties. The novel intertwines three main plot lines that drawreaders to the fates of Milo, born in Quebec in 1952, and to his forebears: his mother, an Indian prostitute inMontreal; and his grandfather, a rebellious Irish lawyer.From the early 20 th century to the present day; from Ireland to Canada; from the sordid room of anIndian prostitute to the rhythms of the Brazilian capital of capoeira, Nancy Huston explores the complexity oforigins and how to pass them on. This generous narrative, told from numerous points of view and possessed bythe rustling of different languages, paints the portrait both of a man and of a century. Film or novel, novel basedon a film, DANSE NOIRE is the wide-ranging, free-spirited work of an accomplished novelist at the top of herart.Born in Calgary, Nancy Huston has lived in Paris for nearly 40 years. Her books include: CANTIQUEDES PLAINES (1993), INSTRUMENTS DES TENEBRES (1996, Prix Goncourt des lyceens and Prix du LivreInter), L’EMPREINTE DE L’ANGE (1998, grand prix des Lectrices de ELLE), LIGNES DE FAILLE (2006,Prix Femina and Prix France Televisions), INFRAROUGE (2010) and REFLETS DANS UN ŒIL D’HOMME(2012).“Quatre générations, trois continents, plusieurs langues vivantes en VO sous-titrée… DANSE NOIRE,le dernier roman de Nancy Huston, projette sur écran panoramique une production au casting international. Laromancière continue dans son œuvre de fiction de tramer serrés les mots métissés de l’exil et des identitéspatchwork faites d’arrachement et de fidélité.” Livres HebdoArditi, Metin: LA CONFRÉRIE DES MOINES VOLANTS(Grasset, August 2013, 352 pages)Longlisted for Prix Médicis & Prix RenaudotØ In this lively novel, Metin Arditi returns to a little known period of European history: the looting andabuse committed by the Bolsheviks against the Eastern Orthodox Church.1937. The Soviet regime loots, sells, and destroys the treasures of the Eastern Orthodox Church andcloses over one thousand monasteries. The luckiest of the monks escape and live hidden in the forest.Nicodemus is one of them, who, with the help of a handful of vagabond monks, tries to save the mostbeautiful treasures of Eastern Orthodox religious art. Nicodemus is an imposing figure who is constantly angry.A crime he committed in his youth led him to take refuge in a monastery, and he lives with the weight of thispersonal tragedy he cannot confess for fear of being excommunicated. Fascinating characters surround him onall sides: a former trapeze artist, a guileless twenty year old, and a number of other fanatics.And then there’s Irina, who flees from Hell, crosses Europe, arrives in Paris, and changes her identity…Her story is at the heart of this radiant testimony of resistance and redemption that carries us from pre-war to thepresent day, from Bolshevik Russia to contemporary Moscow, with its billionaires and art galleries. This is astunning tale of a few brave men.Born in Ankara in 1945, Metin Arditi lives in Geneva. He is the president of the Orchestre de la Suisseromande and the Les Instruments de la Paix-Genève Foundation. He has written seven novels, including LETURQUETTO, in 2011, which won the Jean-Giono Prize, the Page des libraires Prize, the Alberto-BenvenistePrize and the Libraires de Nancy Prize, and the rights to which have been purchased for Serbia (Laguna), Turkey(Can Yayinlari), Greece (Kalendis), Italy (Neri Pozza) and Poland (Noir sur Blanc).Rights sold: Greek (Patakis)Contact: Mrs Anastasia Lester ; Email:anastassia.lester@free.fr 9