L'exil d'Hortense

By Jacques Roubaud

Book Overview

-- First paperback edition. -- Hortense is in trouble again. Set to marry the Premier Prince Presumptive, our heroine finds herself caught in the middle of the plot of Hamlet, playing the unfortunate role of Ophelia. Can she escape in time? Brimming with brilliant wordplay, mathematical equations, literary allusions, and cats, Hortense in Exile continues the Hortense series in grand style. -- Jacques Roubaud is president of the l'Association Georges Perec, a society dedicated to honoring the work of his fellow Oulipian. -- First published in the U.S. by Dalkey Archive (1992).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1564782557
• ISBN13: 9781564782557
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Length: 211 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.4"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Funny and Brainy

Roubaud is one of the few "Postmodernist" writers I can deeply enjoy. One reads the Americans in the canon -- T.C. Boyle, Pynchon, Delillo, et al. -- with a sort of obligatory admiration. The typical work is cleverly plotted, verbally proficient, and suitably "critical" of modern life -- but who cares?Roubaud employs the now standard tricks of the postmodernist: breaking the wall between reader and author, twitting convention, playing with our understandings of culture and media -- and he does so with a wink. This book is hilarious. One senses that his stripping away of all the pretenses of fiction leaves only the author, and that he's charming.