Liliane Giraudon; Pallaksch, Pallaksch

Translated from the French by Julia Hine

Series No.: SMC 061

ISBN: 978-1557131911, Pages:

French Literature, Fiction

A Sun & Moon title.

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The words "Pallaksch, Pallaksch" are reportedly those spoken by the mad Hölderlin to mean both yes and no. No one could interpret those words precisely; one could not know whether he meant yes I'd like soup or no, I wouldn't until he took the soup or threw it in one's face.

The very indeterminacy of this phrase is appropriate to these haunting tales about the lives of the poor and the oppressed. In "The Artist" a man describes his life in a cannery as accountant and his private, artistic life of embalming the workers in the factory. In "The Border" a man escapes to the country, delaying his return to his lover and city, until he gradually retreats, hermit-like, so far into nature that he literally becomes part of it. Giraudon's dark world is that of the outcast, of abused children, and hapless lovers. But her stories are not those of pity but of magic and dark mysteriousness, revealing her fascination with the fabric of each individual's life.

Author of Fur, La Nuit, Divagation des chiens, and other works of poetry and fiction, Liliane Giraudon was born in 1946. She lives in Marseille, France where she edited Banana Split with her husband, the poet Jean-Jacques Viton.