Real Life. Adeline Dieudonné
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A fierce and poetic debut on surviving the wilderness of family life
At home there are four bedrooms: one for her, one for her little brother Sam, one for her parents, and one for the carcasses. Her father is a big game hunter, a powerful predator, and her mother is submissive to her violent husband’s demands. The young narrator spends the days with Sam, playing in the shells of cars dumped for scrap and listening out for the melody of the ice-cream truck, until a brutal accident shatters their world. The uncompromising pen of Adeline Dieudonné wields flashes of brilliance as she brings her characters to life in a world that is both dark and sensual. This breathtaking debut is a sharp and funny coming-of-age tale in which reality and fantasy collide.
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Praise for Real Life
‘A magnificent, resilient young heroine.’
Le Figaro
‘A sense of rhythm, hard-hitting words, and vitriolic humor.’
COLINE SERREAU, director of Chaos
‘Always at the limit between the naïveté of a child and the profundity of those of us who have already seen too much.’
VÉRONIQUE CARDI, Publisher
‘It’s an impressive debut novel, poetic and violent at the same time, with great visual force.’
GIOVANNA CANTON, Publisher
‘I read the novel in one go. What a hypnotizing voice!’
CRISTINA DE STEFANO, Literary Scout
‘Bitter, raw, and fast-paced: a tale that’s filled with a hunger for life.’
ALAIN LORFÉVRE, La Libre Belgique
‘When the innocence of fairy tales meets the terror of a Stephen King thriller.’
BERNARD LEHUT, RTL
‘A tremendous energy. A new voice. Mind-blowing.’
PIERRE ASSOULINE, La République des Livres
‘Don’t miss out on this debut novel, both cruel and fierce. Adeline Dieudonné makes her entry into literature like a warrior.’
JÉRÔME GARCIN, Le Nouvel Observateur
‘This story is inevitably touching and disturbing, since it meticulously displays the mechanisms of physical and moral domestic violence through a cruel, perverse, and violent father. The author’s style is slick, poetic, metaphoric, beautiful, and brutal at once, much like life can also be.’
Light and Smell Blog
‘A powerful and delicate novel about the strength and the resistance of a woman, who is little more than a child and yet already an adult.’
Solferino Libri
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ADELINE DIEUDONNÉ is a Belgian author and lives in Brussels. Real Life, her debut novel, was published in France in Autumn 2018 and has since been awarded most of the major French literary prizes: the prestigious Prix du Roman FNAC, the Prix Rossel, the Prix Renaudot des Lycéens, the Prix Goncourt―Le Choix de la Belgique, the Prix des Étoiles du Parisien, the Prix Première Plume, and the Prix Filigrane, a French prize for a work of high literary quality with wide appeal. Dieudonné also performs as a stand-up comedian.
ROLAND GLASSER was born in London, studied in Aberystwyth, and lived in Paris for a decade, pursuing twin careers in translation and the performing arts. His translation of Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83 won the Etisalat Prize for Literature 2016 and was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and the Best Translated Book Award. Authors he has translated include Anne Cuneo, Martin Page, Marc Pouyet, Julien Aranda, and Stéphane Garnier. Roland is a co-founder of The Starling Bureau—a London-based collective of literary translators.
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AUTHOR
‘Adolescence fascinates me: it’s a time of great transformations, of burning emotions. The parents in my novel don’t assume their role in the slightest, and so this child and her brother are left to their own devices. I was interested to see how their relationship with death would change when they witness a tragic accident up close. Suddenly they are forced to confront our condition as living beings who can die, who can suffer, who can be hurt. My heroine has a sense of responsibility that is truly exceptional.’
TRANSLATOR
‘It all began with a siphon, for whipped cream, pressurized. Or should that be a flask? My mind was whirring before I’d even translated a word. Then I saw two of them, in the window of one of those stores that sells everything: “Cream Whipper” said the box, above a picture of something that was very definitely a siphon. Real Life is all about the seemingly ordinary, the seemingly familiar, that really isn’t. My challenge as a translator was to maintain this edginess to the seemingly matter-of-fact prose.’
PUBLISHER
‘Adeline Dieudonné’s is a unique new voice that I am very proud to present to you. I fell in love with this debut even before the original version was published in France, where it became a bestseller right away. Dieudonné’s writing is extremely powerful, and feels both fresh and alive. I love her dark humor, the evocative metaphors she uses, and the fearless way she writes about violence and sex. Her writing is something else.’
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Adeline Dieudonné
REAL LIFE
Translated from the French
by Roland Glasser
WORLD EDITIONS
New York, London, Amsterdam
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Published in the USA in 2020 by World Editions LLC, New York
Published in the UK in 2020 by World Editions Ltd., London
World Editions
New York/London/Amsterdam
Copyright © Adeline Dieudonné / L’Iconoclaste, Paris, 2018
English translation copyright © Roland Glasser, 2019
Cover image © Alex Potemkin
Author portrait © Stéphane Remael
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author’s own.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is available
ISBN Trade paperback 978-1-64286-047-4
ISBN E-book 978-1-64286-054-2
First published as La vraie vie in France in 2018 by L’Iconoclaste, Paris.
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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