The French edition of Mutilation Song has been included in the Prix Sade’s first selection of twelve works. The Prix Sade aims to celebrate “contemporary libertinism”, to recognize a writer who has managed “beyond the vicissitudes of the Revolution and the influence of the moral order, to undo the shackles of literature like those of politics.” The prize will be awarded on the 14th of September.
Review of French edition in Les Imposteurs
“Demon’s blues, false bildungsroman, demonic epic, story of a downfall… the paths of interpretation are multiple.
Mutilation Song, magnificently translated by Claro, is a powerful novel, as fascinating as it is disturbing.”
— Guillaume Richez
Review in Belgian culture magazine Focus Vif
“A disturbing, delirious, suffocating assault—upon the family, the illusion of a protective hearth, the supposed solidarity of human beings—that one would, however, have to be wrongheaded not to admire the mastery and power.”
— François Perrin
French edition reviewed in webzine Diacritik
“The evil here does not reside in the tortures and abuses that Dinn, the demon, sends in visions to his anti-Saint-Antoine… but in the disaffection that he arranges, in the rupture of all personal ties. On closer observation, Mutilation Song, like The Plight House before it, is, strangely, a book about love.”
— Lucien Raphmaj
Review of French edition in webzine Un Dernier Livre
“Beyond the vertigo of contemplating a gem of pure cruelty, Jason Hrivnak is a writer without equal. A striking style, of the meticulously-crafted word… And all superbly translated by Claro, translator of the impossible, who renders into French this subtle language full of traps.
A tremendous book, to read with caution.”
— Paco Vallat
French translation: Le chant de la mutilation
Le chant de la mutilation, the French translation of Mutilation Song, is now available in paperback and ebook formats from Éditions de l’Ogre, Paris-based specialists in the “literature of unreality”. The translation is by Claro.
“There was once the bildungsroman, the novel of formation, as illustrated by Dickens, Fielding, but also Flaubert, and Vallès, to cite only the most foundational and innovative. Would Jason Hrivnak invent another genre: the novel of deformation? This is what we are invited to discover… with the publication of Mutilation Song.”
— Claro
More French bloggers on La Maison des Épreuves
“Labyrinth, monument, Pandora’s box… La Maison des Épreuves, Jason Hrivnak’s first novel… is, beneath its somber and depressed appearance, a beautiful response to the death drive and a stimulating ode to existence.”
— Eric Darsan, “La Maison des Épreuves, Jason Hrivnak”
“La Maison des Épreuves never ceases to surprise, accumulating puzzles, incantations and scenes of remarkable visual power, its gaze as much upon Poe, Burton and Lovecraft as upon the grammar of the most twisted horror films.”
— Cyril Tavan, “La Maison des Épreuves de Jason Hrivnak”
“Translated by Claro, La Maison des Épreuves is an astonishing, disconcerting book in which the passion for death and failure appear much stronger and more singular than the search for happiness, as if consolation could only be derived from the products of sorrow.”
— Fabien Ribery, “Debout, au milieu du désastre”
“La Maison des Épreuves is a literary curiosity… We exit intrigued and at the same time marked by this difficult and fascinating reading experience, perplexed by our own feelings, as at the end of a disturbing and absurd dream.”
— Anne, “La Maison des Épreuves de Jason Hrivnak”
French edition now available
La Maison des Épreuves, a French translation of The Plight House, is now available from Éditions de l’Ogre. L’Ogre publishes both original works and works in translation, its mission being to present writing that “undermines our sense of reality”.
Claro, the translator, is a founding member of the inculte collective and has published more than twenty books of his own fiction. His extensive list of translations includes works by Dennis Cooper, Brian Evenson, William T. Vollmann, Chuck Palahniuk, and, forthcoming, Alan Moore’s Jerusalem.
