F r e n c h Li t e r at u r e S e r ies
D a l ke y a r c h i v e p r ess
Works
Edouard Levé
Translated by Jan Steyn
“A book describes works conceived of but not realized by its author.” Like Suicide and Autoportrait, Works is another of Eduoard Levé’s bewitching reconceptions of what the novel can (or should) do.
A list of 533 projects, beginning with its own description—both likely and unlikely, sober and ridiculous—some of which Levé later realized, most of which he did not. Works ranks with the fiction of Georges Perec for its seemingly limitless, ingenious, and comical inventiveness. A lampoon of conceptual art—if not, indeed, an exemplar of its charms at their best—Works is another piece in the puzzle of Levé’s brief and fascinating life.
“This is fiction, but it is fiction of a for sale throughout the world
sort that raises some very serious questions about the possibility of cordoning off actual realities from imagined ones. . . . Dizzying and disturbing in a way that is quite unlike anything else I have ever read.” —The Millions
$14.00t / £9.50 paper 978-1-56478-903-7 A u g u s t 208 pages F r e n c h L i t e r at u r e
108 | s p r i n g 2 0 1 4
“[A] mixture of thoughtfulness and self-regard, honest interrogation and mere posing . . . the kind of writing that got us reading in the first place.” —Zadie Smith Edouard Levé
was born in 1965 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. A
writer, photographer, and visual artist, he authored four books of writing—Works, Journal, Autoportrait, and Suicide—and three books of photographs. Suicide, published in 2008, was his final book.