| The Salt Smugglers: History of the Abbe de Bucquoy Contributor(s): de Nerval, Gérard (Author), Sieburth, Richard (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0980033063 ISBN-13: 9780980033069 Publisher: Archipelago Books OUR PRICE: $14.40 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 2009 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Short Stories (single Author) |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 2009014413 |
| Physical Information: 0.5" H x 7.9" W x 6.6" (0.55 lbs) 147 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: First published as a feuilleton in a left-wing newspaper in 1850, The Salt Smugglers provides a political satire of the waning days of France's short-lived Second Republic. With nods to Diderot and Sterne, this shaggy-dog story deals less with contraband salt smugglers than with the subversive power of fiction to transgress legal and esthetic boundaries. By writing what he claimed was a purely documentary account of his picaresque adventures in search of an elusive book recording the true history of a certain seventeenth-century swashbuckler, Nerval sought to deride the press censors of the day who forbade the serial publication of novels in newspapers - and in the process he provocatively deconstructed existing distinctions between fact and fiction. Never before translated into English and still unavailable as a separately published volume in French, The Salt Smugglers is a pre-postmodern gem of experimental prose. Richard Sieburth's vibrant translation and illuminating afterword remind us why G rard de Nerval's blend of sly irony and acerbic social criticism proved so inspiring to authors as various as Baudelaire, Proust, and Leiris. |