Gallic Noir
Volume 1
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The first volume of the collected works of 'the true heir to Simenon', the late French noir writer Pascal Garnier.
'A mixture of Albert Camus and JG Ballard' Financial Times
Enter the world of Pascal Garnier, where life's misfits take centre stage, there is drama in the everyday and the unexpected is always just around the corner.
Volume 1 includes The A26, in which a new Picardy motorway brings modernity close to a flat in which a brother and sister live together, haunted by terminal illness and the events of 1945; How's the Pain?, the tale of an ageing 'pest exterminator' taking on one last job on the French Riviera; and The Panda Theory, in which a stranger, Gabriel, arrives in a Breton town and befriends the locals ... but is he as angelic as he seems?
Dark, funny and shot through with menace, these perfectly crafted novellas of Gallic noir are also affecting studies in human alienation.
About this Author
Pascal Garnier, who died in March 2010, was a talented novelist, short story writer, children's author and painter. From his home in the mountains of the Ardèche, he wrote fiction in a noir palette with a cast of characters drawn from ordinary provincial life. Though his writing is often very dark in tone, it sparkles with quirkily beautiful imagery and dry wit. Garnier's work has been likened to the great thriller writer, Georges Simenon.
Melanie Florence teaches at the University of Oxford and translates from the French.
Emily Boyce is a translator and editor. She was shortlisted for the French Book Office New Talent in Translation Award in 2008, the French-American Translation Prize in 2016, and the Scott Moncrieff Prize in 2021. She lives in London.
Reviews
Praise for Pascal Garnier
'A dark, richly odd and disconcerting world ... devastating and brilliant' Sunday Times
'A mixture of Albert Camus and JG Ballard' Financial Times
'A brilliant exercise in grim and gripping irony, it makes you grin as well as wince' Sunday Telegraph
'Garnier's take on the frailty of life has a bracing originality' Sunday Times
'Marvellously unpredictable' The Guardian
'A master of the surreal noir thriller - Luis Buñuel meets Georges Simenon' TLS
'Bleak, often funny and never predictable' Observer
'For those with a taste for Georges Simenon or Patricia Highsmith' The Independent
'Deliciously dark ... painfully funny' Marilyn Stasio, New York Times
'Pascal Garnier is my favourite French crime writer by a country mile ...' Laura Wilson, The Guardian
'Horribly funny ... appalling and bracing in equal measure. Masterful' John Banville
'Garnier plunges you into a bizarre, overheated world, seething death, writing, fictions and philosophy. He's a trippy, sleazy, sly and classy read' A. L. Kennedy
'Wonderful ... Properly noir' Ian Rankin
'Ennui, dislocation, alienation, estrangement - these are the colours on Garnier's palette. His books are out there on their own, short, jagged and exhilarating, unexpected slaps around the face that make you laugh with surprise while you spin around to see who did it' Stanley Donwood
'Exquisite noir' Publishers Weekly
'Brief, brisk, ruthlessly entertaining ... Garnier makes bleakness pleasurable' John Powers, NPR
'Wickedly fun ... wonderfully dark' Complete Review
'A perfectly balanced cross between a thriller and a social document' L'Express
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