Carcasse - by Mariette Navarro (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A character of indeterminate gender stands on many thresholds--of time, identity, and meaning--without moving an inch. Nothing happens, and yet everything shifts.

Time, identity and history swirl around Carcasse, as this undefined being grows, fossilizes, then crumbles. The work's structure, abstract yet emotionally vivid, registers a crisis of being. Radical in its compression and philosophical depth, Carcasse invokes the universality of Beckett's theatre and the force of Celan's poetry. Navarro probes the fragility of identity, the urgency of presence, and the liminal state in which we find ourselves.

About the Author

Mariette Navarro is an educator, novelist, and dramaturg. She has been part of the Comédie de Béthune since 2014. She was also associated with the Scènes du Jura for the 2015-2016 season and the théâtre de l'Aquarium for the 2017-2018 season. Since 2016, she has co-directed the Grands fonds collection with Cheyne éditeur. Her plays include Nous les vagues followed by Célébrations (Quartett, 2011), Prodiges(R) (Quartett, 2012), Les Feux de poitrine (Quartett, 2015), Les Chemins contraires (Cheyne éditeur, 2016), Zone à étendre (Quartett, 2018), Les Hérétiques (Quartett, 2018), and Les Désordres imaginaires (Quartett, 2020). Her novella Alors Carcasse (Cheyne éditeur, 2011) won the Robert-Walser Prize 2012. She is also the author of the novel Ultramarine. Carcasse is her first novella.

Eve Hill-Agnus is a Franco-American writer, editor, and translator. Her first novel-length translation, of Mariette Navarro's Ultramarine, won the Albertine Translation Prize and the Texas Institute of Arts and Letters Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translation.