Synopses & Reviews
From the original Atheneum edition jacket, 1964."J.M.G. Le Clézio, revelation of the literary year" ran the headline of the Paris Express after last year's prizes had been awarded. The Goncourt jury was locked five to five until its president used his double vote to give the prize to the older candidate. Ten minutes later the Renaudot jury elected the candidate they thought they might lose to the other prize. Most of the literary sections ran their prize news putting the Renaudot first, in order to feature the twenty-three-year-old discovery that was rocking Paris literary circles.
What is The Interrogation? Most likely a myth without distinct delineations. A very solitary young man, Adam Pollo, perhaps the first man, perhaps the last, has a very remarkable interior adventure. He concentrates and he discovers ways of being, ways of seeing. He enters into animals, into a tree.... He has no business, no distractions; he is at the complete disposal of life. All of life, that is, except the society of his own species -- and so the story ends.
"This is the next phase after the 'the new novel,'" wrote the critics. Kafka they said; a direct descendant of Joyce, they said. Beckett they said. Like nothing else, they said. One hundred thousand Frenchmen bought it. They said it was strange and beautiful. Finally the real voice of the young, said the critics. "I like J. D. Salinger," said Mr. Le Clézio, and that was all he said. His remarkable first book will soon be published all over the world and much more will be said.
Review
"Le Clézio has told his story without a single recourse to philosophical, moral or metaphysical jargon; his tone has a tranquility which conveys all the ultimate sense of the profound meaning of life: a tone for poets....Le Clézio. A name to remember."-- Maurice Nadeau, L'Express
Synopsis
The exceptional literary debut of J.M.G. Le Clzio, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, The Interrogation, tells the story of a sensitive, solitary young man at odds with society.
About the Author
J. M. G. Le Clézio, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in Nice in 1940 and is one of France's best-known contemporary writers. He has written more than forty fiction and nonfiction books. The Interrogation, his first novel, published when he was only twenty-three, was a literary sensation; it received the prestigious Renaudot Prize in France, and the author was recognized, as the Swedish academy put it, as "a conjurer who tried to lift words above the degenerate state of everyday speech and to restore to them the power to invoke an essential reality." He currently divides his time between Brittany, France; Mauritius; and Albuquerque, New Mexico