Life is Short and Desire Endless
By Patrick Lapeyre
(Other Press, Paperback, 9781590514849, 336pp.)
Publication Date: June 19, 2012
Categories: Literary
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Winner of the 2010 Prix Femina, this delicious novel revolves around a classic love triangle: two men and one woman. She is English, they are French and American. The Frenchman is married, the American is not. None of this makes any difference. The woman—elusive, unreliable, a classic femme fatale—flits back and forth between her two lovers, driving them both mad.
Lapeyre’s subtle, graceful, yet compulsively readable narrative shows us the folly of men who fall helplessly in love with women they don’t understand. Its theme is universal and its humor is sly. It is the perfect introduction in English to this brilliant writer’s work.
Patrick Lapeyre is the author of six acclaimed novels, all published by Éditions P.O.L, including L’Homme-soeur, which was awarded the Prix du Livre Inter in 2004. Life Is Short and Desire Endless was also nominated for the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Renaudot.
Adriana Hunter studied French and Drama at the University of London. She has translated more than forty books including Enough About Love by Hervé Le Tellier (Other Press) and has been short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize twice. She lives in Norfolk, England.
“In lucid, elegant prose Patrick Lapeyre explores the obsessive love of two men for the same woman. Wonderfully cinematic, readers will be quickly seduced by this engrossing story told with a sensibility that could only be French. A truly memorable novel!” —Katharine Davis, author of Capturing Paris and East Hope
“An appealing oddness of language elevates Lapeyre’s English-language debut above the standard love triangle story.” —Publisher’s Weekly
“Lapeyre writes with great wit and sly craft on the miseries of unfulfilled relationships.” —Kirkus
“There are no easy answers in Lapeyre’s discomfiting novel… but the journey is absorbing.” —New York Times Book Review
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