Viviane

Les Éditions de Minuit, publisher of Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet, among others, rarely publishes a debut novel. Jean Echenoz, current star of the revered French literary house and enthusiastic fan of Julia Deck, confesses that he didn’t send his first novel to Minuit because they are "too demanding…the essence of literary quality, too good a publisher for me." This is why, thirty years later, a first novel published by Minuit has gripped French readers and taken the literary world by storm.

Viviane Élisabeth Fauville is both an engrossing murder mystery and a gripping exploration of madness, a narrative that tests the shifting boundaries of language and the self. For inspiration, Julia Deck read the work of another star of Éditions de Minuit, Samuel Beckett, because, as she says, "he positions himself within chaos, and gives it coherence." This breakthrough novel, nominated for the Prix Femina, the Prix France Inter and the Prix du Premier Roman, follows suit through its arrestingly inventive style. It is sure to become a contemporary classic, and its author "now belongs to the most exclusive and prestigious family of French literature" (Le Nouvel Observateur).