Me and My King
Arnaud Rykner
Translated by Sue Boswell
“My king is so far away. It would perhaps be best if I kept quiet. But silence means nothing to him. He wants words. Perhaps that’s why I talk. That’s perhaps the only reason. The only reason for my words is that it’s him I’m talking to.”
Here, presented for the first time in English, in a superb translation by Sue Boswell, is Arnaud Rykner’ s first novel, “Me and My King”.
Behind a bolted door, a voice is talking to itself and talking to its king, he who has explained to it the universe, the stars, but also those who have been hanged, the crows, the giants, hell. In this kingdom of four walls, the space where it’s confined, where its pain reigns, the small voice soliloquises unceasingly at this other loved and hated being. A chatty voice, perpetually fighting against the void and the silence, words woven together, sung, without echo.
To each his prison, to each his king.
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 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. 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 and a Senior Research Fellow of the University of Durham.
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 external relations and communications. Later she became a translator for the Wiener Holocaust Library, and translated Arnaud Rykner’ s novel Le Wagon as The Last Train (Snuggly Books, 2020). Her other translations include Marcel Schwob’ s The Assassins and other Stories, Ilarie Voronca’ s The Confession of a False Soul and with her husband, Colin Boswell, Gustave Kahn’ s The Mad King, also for Snuggly Books
Paperback, 106 pages
Release date: January 12, 2024
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-142-2
Price: US$14.00