Novel
Das Jahr der Liebe
Not translated into English
Paul Nizon · 1981
Synopsis
A Swiss man who left his country after a painful love affair settles in Paris, in a tiny Montmartre room inherited from an aunt, to finally become the writer he wants to be. He walks the streets, sits in cafés, lets himself be carried by chance and by women; a young woman he loves rejects him, and only brothels ease his solitude for a time. The city strikes him as icy: it will kill him, he tells himself, or bring him back to life. The book keeps the diary of a creation that does not come.
Context
Nizon wrote the book in Paris between 1977 and 1981, in the small flat inherited from his aunt, and Suhrkamp published it in 1981. It is the most autobiographical of his books, the first in which he merges entirely with his narrator. Jean-Louis de Rambures translated it and persuaded Hubert Nyssen, at Actes Sud, to publish it; it appeared in Arles in 1985 according to the BnF, when the author was almost unknown in France, and it has remained available in paperback.
Who it is for
In French, some two hundred pages. No plot but a succession of days; the author presents himself as his own character.
Prizes and reception
In 1987, in Le Monde, Michel Contat regarded it as one of the finest books written about Paris; the author's success in France began there.
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