I Will Not Come

Arnaud Rykner

Translated by Sue Boswell

He is a quiet fellow, in his room, in the middle of the city. And yet, angels come to rove about him and within him. One day they are strange angels with the heads of clowns; the next day they have dark eyes and sharp fangs. If he throws one out the window, another comes in through the door. If he locks them in his closet, they reappear in his bed.

I Will Not Come, by Arnaud Rykner, here presented for the first time in English, in a superb translation by Sue Boswell, is a highly unique and mysterious novella, that will enwrap the reader in an uneasy flight between heaven and earth.

About the Author
Arnaud Rykner is a writer and academic. He has published eight novels, several of which have appeared in paperback including Le Wagon which won the Jean d’Heurs prize for historical fiction in 2011; he has also published two plays. In 2019 he was awarded a residency at Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto, a cultural centre run by the Institut Français, where he began work on his next novel. He is a Professor and Director of Research at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, and has also authored a dozen essays and edited many collected works. He was responsible for the critical edition of the theatrical works of Nathalie Sarraute in the prestigious Pléiade series, as well as those of various other modern authors (such as Marguerite Duras) or older works (Marivaux, Maeterlinck), in paperback collections. As a theatrical producer he has notably put on the works of Nathalie Sarraute, Maurice Maeterlinck and Bernard-Marie Koltès. He is a Visiting Professor at Rutgers University (NJ) and a Senior Research Fellow of the University of Durham (UK).

Other books by Arnaud Rykner: The Last Train, (2020); Me and My King, (2024).

About the Translator
Sue Boswell studied French Language and Literature at UCL and for a time taught French at Goldsmiths University of London. She then moved into university administration, specialising in university external relations and communications. Later she became a translator for the Wiener Holocaust Library, where she met Arnaud Rykner when he came to give a talk on his novel Le Wagon, now translated by her into English as The Last Train. Sue lives with her husband, Colin Boswell, in London and Ouveillan, a village near Narbonne in the Languedoc.

Paperback, 104 pages. Release date: October 4, 2022
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-112-5
Price: US$12.50