Reading Europe celebrates Belgian French Literature today

Reading Europe celebrates the French Literature of Belgium  

READING EUROPE FROM UK INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS
There are 24 countries in the EU in addition to the 4 countries in the British Isles and Commonwealth. Before the EU Referendum let us take the opportunity to find out something more about fellow members and neighbours. The recommended titles have been selected to let the reader know the literature, history and culture of each country better.

On 26 May we celebrate the French literature of Belgium.
 
RECOMMENDED TITLES FOR FRENCH LITERATURE FROM BELGIUM
 
Malpertuis by Jean Ray, translated by Iain White (Atlas) ISBN 978 0 947757 98 4, pages 172, £8.99 
A manuscript stolen from a monastery; the ancient stone house of a sea-trading dynasty, which may be haunted. These are familiar ingredients for a Gothic novel. But something far more strange and disconcerting is taking place within the walls of Malpertuis as the relatives gather for the impending death of Uncle Cassave. The techniques of H.P. Lovecraft, when transplanted into the suffocating Catholic context of a Belgium scarred by the inquisition, produce in Jean Ray's masterpiece a story of monumental intensity from which events of brilliant ferocity break the surface without ever lessening the suspense as we are carried towards the tale's apocalyptic denouement.
 
Bruges-la-Morte by Georges Rodenbach, translated by Mike Mitchell (Dedalus) ISBN 978 1 903517 82 6, 166 pages, £7.99 
The widower Hugues Viane chooses Bruges, the 'dead city' as the most appropriate location to mourn his wife. The sombre labyrinth of streets and canals of Bruges go from being the backdrop for the novel to its central character. Hugues life changes when he encounters a young dancer who reminds him of his dead wife. The clash between tradition and modernity, preserving the past or embracing change is at the heart of Bruges-la-Morte and the other two novels Rodenbach wrote about Bruges.
 
FURTHER READING FROM DEDALUS FOR BELGIUM...

The Bells of Bruges by Georges Rodenbach, translated by Mike Mitchell (Dedalus) ISBN 978 1 903517 54 3, 244 pages, £9.99 
'The novel is a story of love and obsession, of two beautiful sister and a man who marries the 'wrong' sister, of an artist in sound whose dedication to his office has something terrible in it. But the dominant character is the city of Bruges, which comes to possess the reader's imagination as it has possessed Rodenbach's and then Mitchell's. This is a beguiling translation, which captures a Lawrentian intensity of sensuous experience.' Helen Dunmore, novelist and chair of the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize judges.
 
Hans Cadzand's Vocation(and other stories) by Georges Rodenbach, translated by Mike Mitchell (Dedalus) ISBN 978 1 903517 86 4, 168 pages, £7.99
Hans Cadzand's father dies when he is an infant and he becomes the centre of his mother's life. As he grows up from a pretty child to a serious young man with deep religious convictions, she hopes she will remain the focus of his life. She sees his desire to enter holy orders as a threat to their life together and tries to keep him near her by marrying him off to the daughter of her closest friend. This plan founders on the rock of his vocation, but then Mevr Cadzand engages the beautiful and experienced Ursula as housemaid...