Cave of Heaven

by Patrick Grainville, Dominic Di Bernardi (Translator)

Overview

This extravagant novel marks the English-language debut of one of France's most exciting and controversial writers. At the center is a mysterious excavation site in southwest France, where the skull of a 500,000-year-old man has been discovered. Simon, a journalist assigned to do a story on the cave, is a voluptuary keenly responsive to his surroundings, finding an erotic patina over everything he sees, hears, touches, imagines."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780916583682
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	11/01/1991
Pages:	237
Product dimensions:	6.02(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

In addition to several of Jacques Roubaud s books, Dominic Di Bernardi has translated works by Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Muriel Cerf, Claude Ollier, and Patrick Grainville, among others.

Editorial Reviews

"DiBernardi's superb translation of this 1984 novel marks the English-language debut of a well-regarded and somewhat controversial French author. This is a work that will captivate readers willing to be seduced by extremes of language and image that reflect artistically the voluptuousness of thought and action of the characters created so brilliantly by the author."-- Anthony Caprio, Oglethorpe Univ., Atlanta

Anthony Caprio

The setting of this Prix Goncourt-winning author's English-language debut is the French village of Aguilar, where a cave has been discovered containing the remains of a 500,000-year-old man. Suddenly the town is overrun with visitors, some connected to the dig--excavators; the journalist Simon; tourists--and some not--an escaped Basque terrorist; a bike gang; a lynx. Most come with sexual peccadilloes which they play out within the drama of the excavation. The result is a melange of musing and metaphor on sex (the title, for one), ancestry, death. ``Bones and kisses. That's their hobby. Orgies, sepulchers. Archaeology and caresses.'' Characters here are subordinate. Myriam, the Cameroon artist attached to the excavation, is a parody of the noble savage, ``flesh with no transcendence, purely animal.'' Simon, her lover and the book's protagonist, smacks of an oversexed Des Esseintes with his sterile, repetitious (and frequently dull) observations. The reductio ad pudendum and Grainville's self-conscious, staccato prose are occasionally effective, never affective. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

DiBernardi's superb translation of this 1984 novel marks the English-language debut of a well-regarded and somewhat controversial French author. This is a work that will captivate readers willing to be seduced by extremes of language and image that reflect artistically the voluptuousness of thought and action of the characters created so brilliantly by the author. The setting, an excavation site in southwest France, hosts the convergence of the prehistoric past on the present. More importantly, this is a novel of affirmation: primitive impulses remain vigorous in modern beings. Grainville seizes this convergence, depicting characters who throb and pulse with life and yet who are clearly born of poetic language and imagination.-- Anthony Caprio, Oglethorpe Univ., Atlanta

Library Journal