Slaves to Fortune. Tom Lanoye
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Men on the run in a world gone mad
Two Belgian exiles, both called Tony Hanssen, are on the run from their former lives on different continents. In Buenos Aires one of the Tony Hanssens, a former cruise director, is playing a dangerous game as a boy toy to the elderly wife of a wealthy Chinese businessman. In South Africa a totally different Tony Hanssen, a computer specialist running from a crashed merchant bank, breaks into a game reserve with a precision rifle and war ammunition. Amid the chaos of global capitalism, lawlessness, and disintegrating lives, a chance meeting between the two Hanssens gives each the opportunity to redeem himself by betraying the other. This societal satire with a classic doppelganger motif tackles current topics such as the global financial crisis with scathing humor.
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Praise for Slaves to Fortune
‘An intoxicating novel: relevant, encompassing the entire globe, satirical, and fast-paced. Slaves to Fortune demonstrates with dizzying speed that we Westerners are depressingly interchangeable. Lanoye sparkles on every page.’
De Volkskrant
‘A fiercely intelligent book with international potential.’
De Standaard
‘A delicious novel disguised as a thriller, a book to love.’
NRC Handelsblad
‘Full of surprising twists, occasionally hilarious.’
Gazet van Antwerpen
‘A theatrical representation of capitalism spun out of control, with memorable dialogues and a grotesque, high-speed plot with deep-rooted barbs. The ultimate literary equivalent of Quentin Tarantino.’
Cutting Edge
‘Sparkling, funny, and wry.’
Recensieweb.nl
‘Great in scope, glorious in achievement.’
Metro
‘In an allegory of the global economic crisis and the struggling identity of modern man, each Hanssen holds the solution to the other’s problems—but will they help each other?’
Big Issue North
Praise for Speechless
‘A playful, touching, and verbally extravagant memoir-novel of grief’
Kirkus
‘A splendid tour de force’
Le Monde
‘The best Lanoye has ever written’
De Tijd
‘Painful, gripping, and harrowing, full of verbal pyrotechnics’
Metro
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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 fifty 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 in the Netherlands and Belgium and was awarded several major prizes. Speechless was published in the US in October 2018. Lanoye has won many literary prizes, including the prestigious Constantijn Huygens Prize for his entire oeuvre. His work has been translated into fifteen languages. Slaves to Fortune was shortlisted for both the Libris Literature Prize and the AKO Literature Prize. Tom Lanoye lives in Antwerp and Cape Town.
MICHELE HUTCHISON studied at UEA, Cambridge, and Lyon universities and worked in publishing for a number of years. In 2004, she moved to Amsterdam. Among the many works she has translated are La Superba by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, both Craving and Roxy by Esther Gerritsen, and An American Princess by Annejet van der Zijl. She also co-authored the successful parenting book, The Happiest Kids in the World.
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AUTHOR
‘I wanted to write a novel which struck a balance between Albert Camus and Quentin Tarantino. Between classic European existentialism and a typical American-thriller exploitation—between merciless analysis and merciless fun.
These two extremes led me inevitably to a duo of protagonists: Tony and Tony. They would have to have the same name and the same appearance, but beyond that they should have little in common. Except for one thing: each of them needs the other to redeem himself, and at the same time both realize they will have to betray the other for their own redemption. In this way you automatically end up with a literary rock-’n’-roll version of the age-old doppelganger motif.
From the start, I had one more clear principle: the book had to take place on many continents, but never in Europe, though Tony and Tony are inhabitants of Europe through and through. I wanted them to find themselves lost in a world that has become too vast for its inhabitants and in which the Old Continent has henceforth become as peripheral as its many colonies of times past.
The fragmentation of Tony and Tony needed to embody the fragmentation of all contemporary global citizens—but first and foremost that of the once so proud and now completely confused European.’
TRANSLATOR
‘Flemish is a pyrotechnic version of the Dutch language so I shed many tears trying to replicate Tom Lanoye’s linguistic brilliance. Luckily my bouts of sobbing were interspersed with hoots of laughter because he is a great comic writer too.’
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Tom Lanoye
Slaves to Fortune
Translated from the Dutch
by Michele Hutchison
WORLD EDITIONS
New York, London, Amsterdam
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Published in the USA in 2019 by World Editions LLC, New York
Published as Fortunate Slaves in the UK in 2015 by World Editions Ltd., London
World Editions
New York/London/Amsterdam
Copyright © Tom Lanoye, 2013
English translation copyright © Michele Hutchison, 2015
Cover image © Frauke Schumann
Author 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. The opinions expressed therein are those of the characters and should not be confused with those of the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is available
ISBN Trade paperback 978-1-64286-046-7
ISBN E-book 978-1-64286-053-5
First published as Gelukkige Slaven in the Netherlands in 2013 by Prometheus, Amsterdam
The translation of this book was 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.
Twitter: @WorldEdBooks