Speechless. Tom Lanoye
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A MONUMENT OF LANGUAGE FOR A FLAMBOYANT MOTHER
Flamboyant, proud, and dominant, Josée is unrecognizable after suffering a stroke, which strips her of the ability to speak. Harnessing his power as a playwright and dexterity as a poet, Lanoye weaves together autobiography and fiction to recount the last years of his mother’s life. At the same time he paints a colorful picture of growing up and coming to terms with his homosexuality. Humor, pain and copious amounts of love run throughout this critically acclaimed novel.
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Praise for Speechless
‘A splendid tour de force’
Le Monde
‘The best Lanoye has ever written’
De Tijd
‘Painful, gripping, and harrowing, full of verbal pyrotechnics’
Metro
‘Heart-wrenching and hilarious’
De Morgen
‘Lanoye breaks out the best of his narrative power and his stylistic brilliance’
Humo
‘Lanoye leaves the reader speechless’
Elsevier
‘A poignant and unforgettable book’
De Standaard
‘Gorgeous, forceful, funny, and moving. Lanoye is a master at creating character, setting scenes, picking absolutely perfect evocative details, working with extended metaphors, and plunging you into drama whether of the intimate family kind or natural catastrophe’
LEV RAPHAEL, author of Dancing On Tisha B’av
‘Tom Lanoye sketches an incredibly beautiful portrait of a father, a family, a neighborhood and most of all a mother’
Cobra
‘Stylistically Speechless is a masterpiece’
De Leesclub van Alles
‘Speechless is a book that sings and shines and hums and growls and resonates and amuses and rages and smothers and hurts. It makes you laugh, it makes you angry, it fills you with vicarious shame’
Tzum
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TOM LANOYE is an award-winning, highly acclaimed Belgian novelist, poet, and playwright. Starting out as a poet and critic, he became famous for his prose and drama, as well as his politically and socially engaged columns and his unique cabaret-style performances. He is the author of more than 50 works of poetry, drama and fiction. His bestseller Speechless, voted one of the most popular ‘new classics’ in Belgian and Dutch literature, sold over 150,000 copies and was awarded several major awards. In 2017, Speechless was adapted into a film by Hilde Van Miegham. Lanoye has won many literary prizes, including the prestigious Constantijn Huygens Prize for his entire oeuvre. His work has been translated into fifteen languages. Tom Lanoye lives in Antwerp and Cape Town.
PAUL VINCENT (UK), Honorary Senior Lecturer in Dutch at UCL, has been one of the most renowned translators of Dutch literature for the past twenty years. He was awarded the first David Reid Poetry Translation Prize (2006) for his translation of ‘Herinnering aan Holland’ (‘Memory of Holland’) by Hendrik Marsman and the Vondel Translation Prize 2012 for My Little War by Louis Paul Boon. His recent translations include The Hidden Force by Louis Couperus, While the Gods Were Sleeping by Erwin Mortier, short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and (with John Irons) 100 Dutch-Language Poems: From the Medieval Period to the Present Day, joint winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize 2016.
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AUTHOR
‘My mother was an amateur actress, very small, highly eccentric, who didn’t really see the difference between the stage and the living room. Until I was sixteen I thought it was quite normal that mothers, in order to keep the family running smoothly, would fake a heart attack every now and then. She lost her speech after a stroke and it is about that which I wrote this book. About the source of my talent falling apart.’
TRANSLATOR
‘My task as translator was to try to capture in English the flavor and Burgundian richness of the Flemish narrative—the author’s motto is ‘less is not more’—which is full of compassion, earthiness and expansive, ebullient energy.’
PUBLISHER
‘Tom Lanoye is a true magician with words. He throws them in the air, juggles them around, wraps them in colorful cloth and bewitches us with their beauty. His writing is enchanting, exuberant, bewildering—it leaves you breathless.’
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Tom Lanoye
Speechless
Translated from the Dutch
by Paul Vincent
WORLD EDITIONS
New York, London, Amsterdam
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Published in the USA in 2018 by World Editions LLC, New York
Published in the UK in 2016 by World Editions LTD, London
World Editions
New York/London/Amsterdam
Copyright © Tom Lanoye, 2009
English translation copyright © Paul Vincent, 2016
Images: all of the photographs in the book were taken from the family archives, with the exception of the butcher’s shop photo (taken by Michiel Hendrycks)
Author’s portrait © Tessa Posthuma de Boer
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is available
ISBN Trade paperback 978-1-64286-006-1
ISBN E-book 978-1-64286-026-9
First published as Sprakeloos in the Netherlands in 2009 by Prometheus
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein.
The translation of this book is funded by the Flemish Literature Fund (Vlaams Fonds voor de Letteren – www.flemishliterature.be)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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