Just a few months after the publication of On the road with BashōDany Laferrière has just published his fifth drawn novel, In the splendor of the night.
Posted at 5:04 p.m.
Like its predecessors, the 144-page graphic novel is entirely handwritten. It is published by Points Poésie, in a collection directed by the writer Alain Mabanckou, who describes it as “one of his most touching and moving stories since his novel The Riddle of the Return “, which had earned him the Prix Médicis in 2009.
Dany Laferrière, who has been a member of the French Academy since 2013, evokes his father, his mother, his sister, and probes his soul as a poet who “wakes up in the morning with the taste of a story on his lips”.
IMAGE PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHING HOUSE
Excerpt from Dany Laferrière’s book In the splendor of the night
“People think books sit in the library overnight as they search for sleeping readers. […] I don’t know when the letters of the alphabet infiltrated me to make my life that of a scholar soaked in ink with a trickle of blood,” he wrote.
Throughout the pages, the writer recounts the night that inhabits and haunts him, hides him from others and inspires him, nourished by the memories of his childhood in Port-au-Prince.
The text intertwined with his drawings takes all sorts of graphic liberties. We read the book by manipulating it in all directions, with short sentences emerging in the middle of a sketch or longer tirades written in one go – a bit like entering the intimacy of the poet’s notebook to discover his poetic wanderings and his lively and colorful sketches.
Dany Laferrière will be at a signing session on Friday, in Montreal, on the occasion of “August 12, I buy a Quebec book” day: from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Monet bookstore, and from 6 p.m. the Renaud-Bray bookstore on rue Fleury Est.
In the splendor of the nightDany Laferrière, Dots, 144 pages
In the splendor of the night
Dany Laferriere
Points
144 pages