Reading Marseilles !
Not long ago, we were telling you about Reading Europe, a brilliant project launched by publisher Dedalus to promote European literature. Well, at our smaller (yet immensely rich...) scale, we are today offering you to read the city of Marseilles. Because this pulsing port city bubbling over with history, cutting-edge creative spaces and hip multicultural urbanites, is also famous for its literature.
So here is a little selection of fiction taking place in Marseilles and translated into English you won't regret reading:
Jean-Claude Izzo, Total Chaos, translated by Howard Curtis, Europa editions, 2013
“Full of fascinating characters, tersely brought to life in a prose style that is (thanks to Howard Curtis’ shrewd translation) traditionally dark and completely original.”—The Chicago Tribune This first installment in the legendary Marseilles Trilogy sees Fabio Montale turning his back on a police force marred by corruption and racism and taking the fight against the mafia into his own hands.
Xavier-Marie Bonnot, The First Man, translated by Justin Phipps, MacLehose, 2015
Commandant Michel de Palma, known by his colleagues as 'the Baron', has chosen early retirement and plans to travel the world. But he is dragged back into the force when a case that has haunted him for a decade erupts once more. Resurfacing from Le Guen's Cave, a prehistoric grotto thirty-eight metres below sea level outside Marseille, an experienced diver mysteriously gets into difficulties. Meanwhile, Thomas Autran, a serial killer with a peculiar interest in the supernatural, suffering from a dangerous form of schizophrenia, is once again on the run. Ancient cave paintings, savage murders committed according to a precise ritual: a return to the first ages of humanity, the era of the great Palaeolithic hunters. And despite the gory trail left at each crime scene, de Palma must first understand the child, the secrets of a family, a story of exploitation - and revenge - before he can track down the First Man.
Marcel Pagnol, My Father’s glory & My Mother’s Castle, translated by Rita Barisse , Picador, 1991
With warmth, lucidity and good humour, Pagnol, a boy from the city, recounts the glorious summer days he spent exploring the sun-baked Provençal countryside. He vividly captures the atmosphere of a childhood filled with the simple pleasures: a meal, a joke, an outing shared with his close-knit and loving family. These heart-warming stories remind us of how children can invest the smallest event or statement with incredible significance, how mysterious the workings of the adult world can seem to them and how painful the learning process can often prove. However, Pagnol’s writing is filled with enormous optimism and delight. And his triumph in these classic memoirs is to have created that rare thing, a work suffused with joy.
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo, translated by Robin Buss, Penguin Classics, 2013
A beautiful new clothbound edition of Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel of wrongful imprisonment, adventure and revenge. Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of the Château d’If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and becomes determined not only to escape but to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. A huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s, Dumas was inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment when writing his epic tale of suffering and retribution.
Emile Zola, The Mysteries of Marseilles, translated by Edward Vizetelly, Hutchinson, 1895
Franz-Olivier Giesbert, Himmler’s Cook, translated by, Atlantic Books, 2015
Aged 105, Rose has endured more than her fair share of hardships: the Armenian genocide, the Nazi regime, and the delirium of Maoism. Yet somehow, despite all the suffering, Rose never loses her joie de vivre. As she looks back over her long life - one of survival and, sometimes, one of retribution - she recalls those unique experiences that added such spice to her life, whether it was being a confidante to Hitler, a friend to Simone de Beauvoir or cooking for Heinrich Himmler.
And one non-fiction, because it is impossible to talk about Marseilles without mentioning its most famous architect, Le Corbusier:
Jean-Louis Cohen, Tim Benton, John Tittensor, Le Corbusier Le Grand, Phaidon Press (MIDI ed edition, USA), 2014
A spectacular visual biography of the life and work of Le Corbusier (1887–1965), one of Modernism’s most influential architects, urban planners, and theoristsApproximately 2,000 images and documents, many previously unpublished, feature his major built works, urban plans, paintings, publications, and furniture as well as sketches, archival photographs, and personal correspondenceRarely seen photographs and correspondence shed new light on Le Corbusier’s relationships with Josephine Baker, Eileen Gray, Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Prouvé, and many others.