Maylis De Kerangal

"A slim, bountiful, beautifully written (and gorgeously translated) 'Portrait of the Chef as a Young Man.'" --Nancy Klinke, The New York Times Book ReviewOne of BBC Culture's Ten Books to Read this March and The Rumpus Book Club Pick for MarchMaylis de Kerangal follows up her acclaimed novel The Heart with a dissection of the world of a young Parisian chef More like a poetic biographical essay on a fictional person than a novel, The Cook is a coming-of-age journey centered on Mauro, a young self-taught cook. The story is told by an unnamed female narrator, Mauro's friend and disciple who we also suspect might be in love with him. Set not only in Paris but in Berlin, Thailand, Burma, and other far-flung places over the course of fifteen years, the book is hyperrealistic--to the point of feeling, at times, like a documentary. It transcends this simplistic form, however, through the lyricism and intensely vivid evocative nature of Maylis de Kerangal's prose, which conjures moods, sensations, and flavors, as well as the exhausting rigor and sometimes violent abuses of kitchen work. In The Cook, we follow Mauro as he finds his path in life: baking cakes as a child; cooking for his friends as a teenager; a series of studies, jobs, and travels; a failed love affair; a successful business; a virtual nervous breakdown; and--at the end--a rediscovery of his hunger for cooking, his appetite for life.

Unge Simon Limbres er gått til sengs. Hjertet hviler og han gjør seg klar til en ny morgen. Bare noen timer senere skal han sammen med to venner utfordre de største bølgene på surfebrett. Turen får fatale følger. Reparere de levende er en roman full av spenning, raske avgjørelser og tenksomme pauser. Maylis de Kerangal makter å bringe leseren inn i en prosess der Simons hjerte blir hovedpersonen. Men her er også sterke portretter av aktørene på et sykehus, med deres konflikter og svakheter. Maylis de Kerangal har skrevet en mesterlig roman om en hjertetransplantasjon. Den både dirrer av spenning og er full av metafysiske dimensjoner og medmenneskelighet. Og spenningen ligger like mye i bokens struktur som i handlingen. « Denne boken er en roman, en ordentlig roman, en veldig god roman, en ekstraordinær roman ¿ » Bernard Pivot Le Journal du dimanche

Coca, Southern California. A small town on a wild river, at the margins of the red-rocked desert and the forest where the last of the state's Native Americans still make their home.When Boa, the charismatic new mayor, decides to put Coca on the map, he plans a monumental new project: a six-lane bridge, two hundred metres high, designed and destined to catapult the city into the third millennium.Workers from across the globe flock to California: to earn a living, to escape their pasts, to bear witness to man's mastery of nature. But the project's majestic scope has no regard for the legacy of this ancient land, and within this monochrome Babel festers a very human cocktail of fears and passions. At once timeless and yet exquisitely of its moment, Maylis De Kerangal's multi-award-winning novel follows its broad cast of construction workers and architects, diggers and dreamers, as they navigate both the intricacies of their project and the depths of the human heart.Translated from the French by Jessica Moore

One of Bill Gates' Five Best Summer Reads The basis for the critically-acclaimed film, Heal the Living, directed by Katell Quill v r and starring Tahar Rahim and Emmanuelle Seigner Albertine Prize Finalist Winner of the Wellcome Book Prize and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize Just before dawn on a Sunday morning, three teenage boys go surfing. While driving home exhausted, the boys are involved in a fatal car accident on a deserted road. Two of the boys are wearing seat belts; one goes through the windshield. The doctors declare him brain-dead shortly after arriving at the hospital, but his heart is still beating. The Heart takes place over the twenty-four hours surrounding the resulting heart transplant, as life is taken from a young man and given to a woman close to death. In gorgeous, ruminative prose, it examines the deepest feelings of everyone involved as they navigate decisions of life and death. As stylistically audacious as it is emotionally explosive, The Heart mesmerized readers in France, where it has been hailed as the breakthrough work of a new literary star. With the precision of a surgeon and the language of a poet, de Kerangal has made a major contribution to both medicine and literature with an epic tale of grief, hope, and survival.

Winner of the Wellcome Book Prize 2017.Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2016. Now a major French film, REPARER LES VIVANTS/HEAL THE LIVING, directed by Katell Quillevere and starring Emmanuelle Seigner.A twenty-four-hour whirlwind of death and life.In the depths of a winter's night, the heart of Simon Limbeau is resting, readying itself for the day to come. In a few hours' time, just before six, his alarm will go off and he will venture into the freezing dawn, drive down to the beach, and go surfing with his friends. A trip he has made a hundred times and yet, today, the heart of Simon Limbeau will encounter a very different course.But for now, the black-box of his body is free to leap, swell, melt and sink, just as it has throughout the years of Simon's young life.5.50 a.m.This is his heart.And here is its story.Translated from the French by Jessica Moore