Jean-Philippe Toussaint is a Belgian prose writer and filmmaker, celebrated for his distinctive style and exploration of themes such as memory, time, and the human condition. His works, translated into numerous languages, are characterized by precise prose and subtle humor. Toussaint masterfully intertwines reality with imagination, drawing readers into profound reflections on the nature of existence. His writing is marked by a cinematic sensibility and an acute attention to detail, making him a unique voice in contemporary literature.
'This is a book that isn't going to please anybody, not intellectuals, who aren't interested in football, or football-lovers, who will find it too intellectual. But I had to write it, I didn't want to break the fine thread that still connects me to the world.'
"To write of her that which has never been written of any other woman." And with these words from Dante, Jean-Philippe Toussaint sets out once more to deepen and broaden his depiction of one of contemporary fiction's most fully realized female characters: haute couturière Marie Madeleine Marguerite de Montalte. Having traced the ups, downs, ins, and outs of Marie's relationship with the unnamed narrator through three previous novels, Toussaint brings his customary nuanced rumination and nimble wit to this concluding volume, which takes us back to the Tokyo of Making Love and the Elba of The Truth About Marie, through jealousy and comedy, irony and tenderness, and the meticulous accretion of details that engross and distract us even as life's larger changes shift the assumptions by which we live.
Both a sense of urgency and a goodly amount of patience are required for any writer to produce a novel. Moving between these two poles, Jean-Philippe Toussaint here collects a series of short essays on the art of writing, both his own and that of writers he's admired, for example Kafka, Beckett, Dostoyevsky, and Proust. As Toussaint himself has said, "It's only natural for writers... to say a word about how they write and what they owe to great authors."
Even on holiday, sex and death are Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s constant companions... In Self-Portrait Abroad, our narrator—a Belgian author much like Toussaint himself—travels the globe, finding the mundane blended everywhere with the exotic: With his usual poker face, he keeps up on Corsican gossip in Tokyo and has a battle of nerves in a butcher shop in Berlin; he wins a boules tournament in Cap Corse, takes in a strip club in Japan’s historic Nara, gets pulled through Hanoi on a cycle rickshaw, and has a chance encounter on the road from Tunis to Sfax. Tales of a cosmopolitan at home in a strangely familiar world, Self-Portrait Abroad casts the entire globe in a cool but playful light, reminding us that, wherever we go,we take our own eyes with us...
Set against the backdrop of Japan, this novel explores the poignant final days of a couple's affair, intertwining their emotional unraveling with the vibrant settings of Tokyo and Kyoto. The author employs a cinematic style, characterized by economy and restraint, to vividly capture the characters' feelings. By juxtaposing traditional themes of lost intimacy with the ultramodern landscape, the narrative offers a fresh perspective on love and separation. This strikingly original work showcases the talent of a promising European author.