The Bathroom

Literature & Fiction

TOUSSAINT, Jean-Philippe

Humor & Satire

Marion Boyars

Follows the daily life of a strangely innocent and passive young executive

Monsieur: A Novel

Moving through a variety of locales and adventures, "The Truth about Marie" revisits the unnamed narrator of Toussaint's acclaimed Running Away, reporting on his now disintegrated relationship with the titular Marie--the story switching deftly between first- and third-person as the narrator continues to drift through life, and Marie does her best to get on with hers. Like all of Toussaint's novels, "The Truth about Marie"'s plot matters far less than its pace and tempo, its chain of images, its sequence of events. From pouring rain in Paris to blazing fires on the island of Elba, from moments of intense action to perfectly paced lulls, "The Truth about Marie" relies on a series of contrasts to tell a beguiling, and finally touching, story of intimacy forever being regained and lost.

The Truth about Marie (French Literature)

United States

Dalkey Archive Press

"Toussaint is a genuinely funny writer . . . small erotic moments are captured perfectly . . . makes me long for more by Toussaint." Kirkus Review

Monsieur

In this improbable love story, Toussaint creates a character who is obsessed with himself: how he does things and all the ways he might have done them, how he thinks, why he thinks the way that he thinks, how he might do or think otherwise. What happens? He takes driving lessons, goes grocery shopping, spends endless hours with an adorable employee of the driving school he attends. And though he is aloof, though caught up in his own actions and in the movement of his own thoughts―he somehow emerges as surprisingly insightful and also very funny. In Toussaint’s touching novel, we come to know this character intimately and yet know almost nothing about him. These two extremes, existing together, are at the heart of Toussaint’s remarkable style.

Camera

From the author of Camera, a 2008 New York Times Editor s Choice, comes a novel of love and dislocation.

Running Away (Belgian Literature)

Contemporary

Even on holiday, sex and death are Jean-Philippe Toussaint s constant companions...

Self-Portrait Abroad (Netherlandic and Belgian Literature)

Literary

“A little thing happened to me. Which could just as easily have happened to you. You’re on vacation in a hotel with your son in a small village and you’re about to go see some friends, but something holds you back, a mysterious reticence that prevents you from going to find them. Here is the novel of this reticence, small and specific, and of the fears that it instigates, little by little. Because not only are your friends not there when you do decide to go find them, but, several days later, you find a dead cat in the harbor, a black cat floating in front of you on the water…” In Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s take on the detective novel, we find a man on vacation in a tiny village, where a writer named Biaggi appears to be keeping him under surveillance. To what end? Ah, but it’s far more pleasant to enjoy the Mediterranean night air than to look for answers, make deductions, or get upset―isn’t it?

Reticence (Belgian Literature)

An immediate bestseller in France, Making Love is an original and daring retelling of a classic theme: the end of an affair. As much an exploration of setting and place as it is of the affair that comes apart in them, Making Love follows a couple’s final days together in Japan. Toussaint writes with an economy and restraint that evoke the distinct imagery of film while allowing a startling proximity to the feelings of his characters. The result is vertiginous, standing traditional images on their head and transposing the conflict and confusion of lost intimacy onto the labyrinthine ultramodernism of Tokyo and Kyoto. Brilliantly written and strikingly original, this is a stunning work of new fiction from one of Europe’s most promising authors.

Making Love: A Novel

The New Press

Both a sense of urgency and a goodly amount of patience are required for any writer to produce a novel. Moving between these two poles, Jean-Philippe Toussaint here collects a series of short essays on the art of writing, both his own and that of writers he's admired, for example Kafka, Beckett, Dostoyevsky, and Proust. As Toussaint himself has said, "It's only natural for writers... to say a word about how they write and what they owe to great authors."

Urgency and Patience (Belgian Literature)

Essays & Correspondence

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Books by TOUSSAINT, Jean-Philippe