Winner of a French Voices Award
“What holds the special magic of this text? From its clever construction, and the juxtaposition of its narrative modes…from which emerge the most vibrant, intimate, and passionate voices that tell of sufferings, loves, and pains. A beautiful mosaic work which the reader comes away from moved as if from a dream.” —France TV, Culturebox
Author & Translator Biographies
MICHÈLE AUDIN is a mathematician and a professor at l’Institut de recherche mathématique avancée (IRMA) in Strasbourg, where she does research notably in the area of symplectic geometry. Audin is a member of the Oulipo, and is the author of many works of mathematics and the history of mathematics, She has also published a work of creative nonfiction on the disappearance of her father, Une vie brève (Gallimard, 2013)—Audin is the daughter of mathematician Maurice Audin, who died under torture in 1957 in Algeria, after having been arrested by parachutists of General Jacques Massu. On January 1, 2009, she refused to receive the Legion of Honor, on the grounds that the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, had refused to respond to a letter asking for information on her father, the possible whereabouts of his body, and recognition of the French government’s role in his disappearance. For the Oulipo, Audin has contributed to a collection of short stories, Georges Perec and the Oulipo: Winter Journeys (Atlas Press, 2013), and edited and annotated an abecedary of Oulipo works, OULIPO L’Abécédaire provisoirement définitif (Larousse, 2014). One Hundred Twenty-One Days is her first novel and was published to universal acclaim in 2014 by the prestigious Gallimard publishing house in France.
CHRISTIANA HILLS is a literary translator who graduated from NYU’s MA program in Literary Translation (French–English) and who received a French Voices Award from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States for her translation of One Hundred Twenty-One Days. Hills is currently a doctoral candidate in Translation Studies at Binghamton University in New York.
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Copyright © 2014 by Éditions Gallimard, Paris
Originally published in French as Cent vingt et un jours in 2014
English translation copyright © 2016 by Christiana Hills
First edition, 2016
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-941920-33-6 (ebook)
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER: 2015960719
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Cet ouvrage a bénéficié du soutien des Programmes d’aide à la publication de l’Institut Français.
This work, published as part of a program of aid for publication, received support from the Institut Français.
French Voices Logo designed by Serge Bloch
This work, published as part of a program providing publication assistance, received financial support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange).
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Cover design & typesetting by Anna Zylicz · annazylicz.com
Text set in Bembo, a typeface modeled on typefaces cut by Francesco Griffo for Aldo Manuzio’s printing of De Aetna in 1495 in Venice.
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Table of Contents
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I A Childhood (1900s)
II Diary of Marguerite Janvier (1916-1917)
III One Polytechnician, Three Murders, Twenty-Two Articles (1917-1939)
IV Strasbourg 1939 (transcription of an interview with Pierre Meyer, November 2006)
V Journal of Heinrich Kürz (Paris, 1942)
VI The Form of a City… (N., 1943-2005)
VII Trip to N. (notes from the gray notebook, 2005)
VIII One Hundred Twenty-One Days
IX The Numbers
X The Binder (notes 2006-2010)
XI The Form of a City… (Paris, April 25, 2013)
Supernumerary Chapter (Paris-Strasbourg, 2009-2013)
Index of Proper Names
Translator’s Note
| KALLE: | I like the way it moves towards the war. |
| ZIFFEL: | You think I should arrange it in chapters after all? |
| KALLE: | What for? |
B. BRECHT,
Conversations in Exile
[…] (the form of a city
Changes more quickly, alas, than the human heart)
C. BAUDELAIRE,
“The Swan,” Parisian Scenes
I start to write:
Once upon a time, in a remote region of a faraway land, there lived a little boy. And this little boy was full of an insatiable curiosity and he was always asking ever so many questions. The faraway land where he lived was in Africa, in a country that encompassed a big river called the Saloum River, and the little boy filled the land around this river with his questions.
He asked his father why the Blacks on the plantation were beaten with a stick, and his father spanked him with his leather belt. He asked his mother why she didn’t read her Bible by herself, and his mother spanked him with her two white hands. He asked the village priest why he drank the communion wine during Catechism class, and the priest spanked him with his cane. He asked the schoolteacher why the same number, π, was used to measure all circles, both big ones and little ones, and the schoolteacher didn’t spank him.
I must tell you, O Best Beloved, that some good fairies were watching over this little boy’s cradle. If there were a few evil fairies as well, no one noticed. So there will be no discussion of evil fairies at this point in the tale.
A fairy tale is one way to recount history. The Saloum River, its village, its plantation, its pirogues, and its flame trees form the setting for this tale. The little boy’s parents, his little brother, the fairies, the priest, the schoolteacher, a dog, and a few of the villagers are its characters. The little boy who lived