Volodine, Antoine
Entry updated 2 September 2024. Tagged: Author.
Primary pseudonym of French-Russian translator and author Jean Desvignes (1949/1950- ), active from the 1980s, who has also published as by Lutz Bassmann, Manuela Draeger, Volup Golpiez, Infernus Iohannus (with others), Elli Kronauer. His first novel, Biographie comparée de Jorian Murgrave ["A Comparative Biography of Jorian Murgrave"] (1985), which is sf, fragmentarily examines aspects of the fugitive life on Earth of a seemingly monstrous Alien fleeing the destruction of his home world. Several similarly fragmented texts followed. Des Anges mineurs ["Minor Angels"] (1999), perhaps the most extreme, was described by the author as a narrative of snapshots. Ilia Mouromietz et le Rossignol Brigand ["Ilya Muromitz and the Robber Nightingale"] (1999) as by Elli Kronauer, along with several succeeding works, retells several traditional supernatural Russian epics.
Translations into English began to appear before 2000, beginning with Le nom des singes (1994; trans Linda Coverdale as Naming the Jungle 1996), set in a small South American city where the ex-mercenary protagonist, who has pretended to Amnesia, must after a fashion that seems almost Adamic prove himself by naming the things of the world with supernatural epiphanic exactitude: as a mysterious autochthon might. Le post-exotisme en dix leçons, leçon onze (1998; trans J T Mahany as Post-Exoticism in Ten Lessons, Lesson Eleven 2015) presents fragments (not for the first time in Volodine's oeuvre) of manifestos composed in a Near Future Dystopia where writers are systematically being disappeared. Among the protagonists is Lutz Bassmann (a Volodine pseudonym). A continuing interest in the concept of the bardo as idea and narrative device is perhaps most clearly articulated in Bardo or not Bardo (2004; trans J T Mahany 2016), a title whose multiple play on words may work better in French than English. Like most of his work, these relatively early novels are – in a sense less taxing than the use of the term in this encyclopedia – deemed to belong to the sustained Post-Exotic sequence: they are not so designated in the Checklist below.
Volodine is perhaps best known for two more recent titles. The Satirical burlesque Songes de Mevlido (2007; trans Gina M Stamm as Mevlido's Dreams: A Post-Exotic Novel 2024) is set in a distant Near Future 300 years hence, long after the planet has been variously degraded, where grotesqueries of public intellectual life are re-enacted in a Dystopian East Asia; the protagonist is unknowingly possessed by an Alien life form whose mission is to ease the human race into its inevitable extinction: this is seen as philanthropic. Terminus Radieux (2014; trans Jeffrey Zuckerman as Radiant Terminus 2017) is set in Near Future Siberia after the devastating collapse of the Second Soviet Union; during a long ride on a mysterious train (see Ship of Fools), the protagonists discover a mysterious kolkhoz or collective farm, a coercive Zone under the control of a Mutant dictator. The train departs. The zone vibrates with radioactivity. [JC]
Jean Desvignes
born either Lyon, France: 1949 or Chalon-sur-Saône: 1950
works (selected)
- Biographie comparée de Jorian Murgrave ["A Comparative Biography of Jorian Murgrave"] (Paris: Denoël, 1985) [in the publisher's Présence du futur series: pb/Daniel Furon]
- Un navire de nulle part ["A Ship from Nowhere"] (Paris: Denoël, 1985) [in the publisher's Présence du futur series: pb/Pascal Andrault]
- Rituel du mépris, variante Moldscher ["Ritual of Contempt, Moldscher Variant"] (Paris: Denoël, 1986) [in the publisher's Présence du futur series: pb/Philippe Sadziak]
- Des enfers fablieux ["Fabulous Hells"] (Paris: Denoël, 1988) [in the publisher's Présence du futur series: pb/Daniel Furon]
- Le nom des singes (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1994) [binding unknown/]
- Naming the Jungle (New York: The New Press, 1996) [trans by Linda Coverdale of the above: hb/]
- Le post-exotisme en dix leçons, leçon onze (Paris: Gallimard, 1998) [pb/]
- Post-Exoticism in Ten Lessons, Lesson Eleven (Rochester, New York: University of Rochester/Open Letter, 2015) [trans by J T Mahany of the above: pb/]
- Ilia Mouromietz et le Rossignol Brigand ["Ilya Muromets and the Robber Nightingale"] (1999) as by Elli Kronauer [pb/]
- Dondog (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2002) [pb/]
- Bardo or not Bardo (Paris: Fiction and Cie/Editions du Sieul, 2004) [pb/]
- Bardo or not Bardo (Rochester, New York: University of Rochester/Open Letter, 2016) [trans by J T Mahany of the above: pb/]
- Nos animaux préférés ["Our Favourite Animals"] (Paris: Fiction and Cie/Editions du Seuil, 2006) [pb/]
- Songes de Mevlido (Paris: Fiction and Cie/Editions du Seuil, 2007) [pb/]
- Mevlido's Dreams: A Post-Exotic Novel (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2024) [trans by Gina M Stamm of the above: in the publisher's Univocal series: hb/]
- Terminus Radieux (Paris: Fiction and Cie/Editions du Seuil, 2014) [pb/]
- Radiant Terminus (Rochester, New York: University of Rochester/Open Letter, 2017) [trans by Jeffrey Zuckerman of the above: introduction by Brian Evenson: pb/]
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