The Crab Nebula

By Éric Chevillard

Book Overview

The Crab Nebula (La N buleuse du crabe) is comprised of fifty-two vivid chapters that provide startling insights into the existence of this nebulous man named Crab: his nightmarish--and none too solid--physique, his mysterious absence from the pages of history, his birth in prison, his never having been born at all. In his portrait of Crab, ric Chevillard gives us a character who is genuinely strange and curiously like ourselves. A postmodernist novel par excellence, The Crab Nebula parodies literary conventions, deconstructs narrative and meaning, and brilliantly combines absurdity and hopelessness with irony and humor. What distinguishes it most of all is the startling originality of Chevillard's voice and vision. There is whimsy and despair in this novel, pathos and laughter, satire and warm affection. The Crab Nebula is the fifth novel--and the first to be translated into English--by the brilliant young French author ric Chevillard. His sympathetic yet outrageous portrait of Crab calls to mind works by Melville, Val ry, and Kafka, while never being less than utterly unique.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803263708
• ISBN13: 9780803263703
• Release Date: February 1997
• Publisher: Bison Books
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

A masterpiece of the imagination.

I love this book because I often wonder if there are any boundaries to imagination ( The English scientist and SF writer Arthur C.Clark once said that the only way for travel into space is by imagination ). Why the title The Crab Nebula ? Modern physics tells you that chaos rules the universe and if you can say one thing for sure about Crab: he is chaotic. This novel has no story. The Crab Nebula is comprised of fifty-two chapters that provide insights into the existence of this nebulous man named Crab. This novel explains the possible relationships between a writer and his character. On the cover the publisher says: " A postmodernist novel par excellence, The Crab Nebula, parodies literary conventions, deconstructs narrative and meaning and brilliantly combines absurdity and hopelessness with irony and humor." Yes, Crab is a very strange man. In fact he doesn't exist. Well maybe he exists but only through language. Language is the essence of his personality. But if language is his essence he can only exist in the mind of the writer. You see, the writer is in control of everything: he invents his own laws of nature and logic, in his mind the Earth can be flat or square. He can toy with Crab as much as he likes, he can send Crab this way and at the same time the opposite way. Therefore to us readers, Crab acts like a man who cannot make up his mind, he's a victim and an evildoer at the same time. When you read this novel you have to keep one thing in mind and one thing only: language and imagination are in control

Crab et Eric

La vie qui traverse les personnages d'Eric Chevillard est revisitée, réinventée avec une loufoquerie si délicate et si légère. Ils ont le charme des vrais originaux, comme mon grand-père.

The next testament for the clinically insane.

Reading this book is like having a disjointed series of intellectual dreams after eating too much spicy chili before bed. What's real one minute, or one page, is ethereal the next. Like reading Nostrodamus, the messages are sometimes obscured by the text, but there are so many messages to be found that it doesn't matter. Basically, this book makes one laugh, think, and rub the chin in joyous confusion. If Kafka had Vonnegut's sense of humor, he might have written this book