“Bristol, the turnip of Jean Echenoz”

This article comes from “Figaro Magazine”

Sad observation at the start of the year: Bristol is neither a cardboard invitation nor a palace in Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, but the hero of a failed novel. Robert Bristol is the name of a filmmaker who “directed a dozen fiction films in various genres – detective, fantasy, espionage, war.” Alter ego of the author, he drags his nonsense into a post-literary novel which goes from Paris 16^e to a turnip shoot in southern Africa. What did Echenoz do in this mess? It's simple. After the failed revolution of the Nouveau roman, he and a few other authors published by Minuit wanted to continue telling stories differently.

Jean Echenoz was the best novelist of this group. Goncourt Prize in 1999 for I'm leaving, he made the old new, the post-neo, or something different from the old. He made fun of all genres with virtuosity, humor and finesse. At the beginning of the 21st^e century, he felt that he was going in circles…