Suicide

by Edouard Levé, Jan Steyn (Translator)

Overview

Suicide cannot be read as simply another novel—it is, in a sense, the author’s own oblique, public suicide note, a unique meditation on this most extreme of refusals.

Presenting itself as an investigation into the suicide of a close friend—perhaps real, perhaps fictional—more than twenty years earlier, Levé gives us, little by little, a striking portrait of a man, with all his talents and flaws, who chose to reject his life, and all the people who loved him, in favor of oblivion. Gradually, through Levé’s casually obsessive, pointillist, beautiful ruminations, we come to know a stoic, sensible, thoughtful man who bears more than a slight psychological resemblance to Levé himself. But Suicide is more than just a compendium of memories of an old friend; it is a near-exhaustive catalog of the ramifications and effects of the act of suicide, and a unique and melancholy farewell to life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564786494
Publisher:	Dalkey Archive Press
Publication date:	06/05/2014
Series:	French Literature
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	525,658
File size:	282 KB

About the Author

Édouard Levé (1965-2008), born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, was a writer, photographer, and visual artist. Levé was the author of four books of writing Oeuvres, Journal, Autoportrait, and Suicide, as well as three books of photography. 

Jan Steyn is a South African translator from French and Afrikaans to English. He holds a degree in Comparative Literature from Emory University, and his translations include Suicide and Works by Édouard Levé.

Editorial Reviews

"The sadness of this book is overwhelming. Yet at the same time it's a cause for happiness, because it's the final record of a writer who found, in the end, the correct vessel for his talents. In Suicide, Levé's fragments become wonderfully sharp, conjuring tragedy in a few sentences." --Zadie Smith

Dalkey Archive Press

"The suicide of a childhood friend--addressed here as "you"--elicits a reflective and dignified expression of wondering and grief in this last work by artist and writer Levé (1965-2007), who finished this novel 10 days before killing himself.... Leve's slender narrative possesses a near-clinical precision of detail, which functions as both a funeral oration and the chilling foretelling of his own death." --Publishers Weekly

Dalkey Archive Press

" Suicide is not a fictionalized account of Levé's death; in some respects it is a negative image of it.... Levé's art and life nonetheless converge, fuse, and end brutally together. Ironically, Suicide represents a new departure for Levé: his previous books could be considered conceptual conceits, whereas Suicide is something else, a purely literary work. At the end of his life, Levé had by no means exhausted his art. --Hugo Wilcken, The Berlin Review of Books

Dalkey Archive Press

From the Publisher