Palafox

By Éric Chevillard

Book Overview

Eric Chevillard is a renowned contemporary author who is one of the most inventive young writers on the French literary scene. His third novel, Palafox, explores the ecosystem of an unclassifiable yet enchanting protean creature. A team of 'experts' armed with degrees of higher learning is determined to label, train, pamper, baptise and classify the elusive creature, while Palafox - driven by his own interior logic and flanked by another dimension for the most part on his side - effortlessly and wordlessly defies them all.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0972869247
• ISBN13: 9780972869249
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: Archipelago Books
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.5" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Fantasy

An amusing romp through French society, this book uses the device of a creature of infinite morphability. A thread of devestating characterisation runs through this book tying it together neatly. All the scenes combine to lead to a clever climax.

Not Chevillard's best, but close

I enjoyed this novel very much, but it was bound to pale next to Chevillard's Crab Nebula. The abrupt transitions are not so surprising or funny. But there's enough clever language play and humor for anyone. A group of naturalists and neighbors tries to classify, domesticate and exploit the changeable Palafox, who confounds all of their plans and expectations, sometimes violently.