Rue des absents*
Mouloud Akkouche
Editions de l'Atelier n°8/Noires
de Pau • 2006 • 173 pages
Jean-Marc Laherrère
Translation: Monique Galloway
In the town of Pau, Véronique Radkov is waking up with a
bad hangover: she remembers nothing, cannot understand where she
is, or how she got there. As she comes to, she realises to her horror,
that she is no longer Véronique, she is no longer a woman,
she is a man.
In Montreuil, Jean-Paul is wandering about in his wheelchair. He
isn't all there anymore and often plunges back into the past, to
22 May 1979, the day the Fat Man pushed him in front of a car, turning
him into a cabbage.
Somewhere, via email, Maxime Girard
is running, at arms length, a very prosperous business…
ouloud Akkouche is back on the crime fiction scene and so much the
better. He returns in style with this superbly constructed novel that
switches between points of view and narrative styles, moves from a
classic form of narration to an exchange of letters or a more or less
demented monologue, that juggles locations from Pau to Montreuil via
Lausanne and Toulouse, thereby gradually introducing the different
pieces of the puzzle that will only reveal the whole picture at the
very end. Executed with a masterful touch, this complex construction
presents characters who are at least as bewildered as the reader. A
most enjoyable read.
* Absence Street
