Taormina - by Yves Ravey (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Vacationing in Sicily in an attempt to resuscitate their doomed marriage, a hapless couple soon fall under suspicion for a horrific crime in this razor-sharp noir about migration, police corruption, and the self-absorption of the middle class.

Unhappy couple Melvil and Luisa are on holiday in Sicily in a last-ditch effort to save their broken marriage, but one wrong turn off the highway leaves them stranded in a thunderstorm in the middle of nowhere. The road is muddy, it's late, they hit something indeterminate in the dark.

The next day, the local newspaper reports that a child from a refugee camp was hit by a car and fatally injured. Melvil and Luisa hasten to find a garage in Taormina to repair their rental, but the repairs are costlier than expected, the police are sniffing around, tensions between the couple are rising, and soon their money will run out...

An elegantly laconic modern noir, brimming with the darkest of dark humor, Taormina presents a keen-eyed commentary on migration, police corruption, and the mediocrity and self-absorption of the middle class in a stunning translation by Alyson Waters.

Review Quotes

"The strangeness that Yves Ravey creates belongs not to an unknown world but to one that is unnervingly familiar... Every Yes Ravey novel begins in unease and deepens into perplexity." --Patrick Kéchichian, Le Monde

"Taormina is a little jewel of pitch-black humor an ice cube in the Mediterranean heat. Ravey's deadpan comedy is haunted by the most serious questions." --Valérie Marin La Meslée, Le Point

About the Author

Yves Ravey was born in Besançon, France, in 1953. He is the author of more than twenty novels and the winner of the Prix Marcel-Aymé and the Prix Renfer. Taormina is the first of his novels to appear in English.

Alyson Waters is an award-winning translator of some two dozen works of literary fiction and children's literature. For NYRB she has translated works by Emmanuel Bove, Jean Giono, and Jean-Patrick Manchette. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.