Revenge of the Translator, Paperback

The work of a masterful novelist and translator collide in this visionary and hilarious debut from acclaimed French writer Brice Matthieussent. Revenge of the Translator follows Trad, who is translating a mysterious author's book, Translator's Revenge, from English to French. The book opens as a series of footnotes from Trad as he justifies changes he makes. As the novel progresses, Trad begins to take over the writing, methodically breaking down the work of the original writer and changing the course of the text. The lines between reality and fiction start to blur as Trad's world overlaps with the characters in Translator's Revenge, who seem to grow more and more independent of Trad's increasingly deranged struggle to control the plot. Revenge of the Translator is a brilliant, rule-defying exploration of literature, the act of writing and translating, and the often complicated relationship between authors and their translators.

Brice Matthieussent is an award-winning translator of over 200 novels from English into French, including the writings of Jim Harrison, for which he was awarded the 2013 Prix Jules Janin from the Académie française. In 2000, he was awarded the UNESCO-Françoise Gallimard Prize for his translation of Robert McLiam Wilson's Eureka Street. His other translations include the works of Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller, Annie Dillard, Rudolph Wurlitzer, and Charles Bukowski. He graduated from the École nationale supérieure Mines de Paris in 1973, and earned his PhD in philosophy in 1977. Matthieussent currently resides in France, where he teaches the history of contemporary art and aesthetics at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Marseille. Revenge of the Translator, forthcoming from Deep Vellum in 2018, is his first novel, and was awarded the Prix du style Cultura upon publication in France in 2009.

Emma Ramadan is a graduate of Brown University, received her Master's in Cultural Translation from the American University of Paris, and recently completed a Fulbright Fellowship for literary translation in Morocco. Her translation of Anne Garreta's Sphinx was published by Deep Vellum in spring 2015 and was nominated for both the PEN Translation Prize and the Best Translated Book Award. Her translation of Anne Parian's prose poem Monospace was released by La Presse in fall 2015, and her translation of Fouad Laroui's Prix Goncourt story collection The Curious Case of Dassoukine's Trousers was published in spring 2016. Her forthcoming translations of Laroui's debut novel in English The Tribulations of the Last Sjilmassi, and Brice Matthiuessent's Revenge of the Translator will be published by Deep Vellum in 2018.