Fiction. Jewish studies. For decades, Raymond Federman has been dazzling readers with his unique brand of "surfiction"--throwing zany words all over the page and inserting himself into every fiction, often through such zany alter egos as Moinous and Namredef. Now comes the greatest self-reverential work of all as Federman spins all manner of tales of various parts of his own body, recounting his childhood in France, adult life in the U.S., Jewish heritage, and career as a writer, with no effort made to distinguish between fact and fiction, memory and imagination. Previously published in France as Mon corps en neuf parties, Federman's masterpiece is now available for the first time in English, with augmented translation by the author and accompanied by ten photographs by Steve Murez.

Author City: SAN DIEGO, CA USA

Raymond Federman (1928-2009) was one of the most significant fiction writers of recent generations. Federman emigrated to the US in 1947 following the deaths of his mother, father, and two sisters in the extermination camp at Auschwitz. His early experiences in the US included being a American paratrooper in Korea, a saxophone player in Detroit, and a dishwasher and student in Columbia University, before earning a PhD at UCLA and becoming one of the first American critical promoters of the work of Samuel Beckett. Federman taught literature and creative writing at SUNY-Buffalo for 35 years. His numerous experience, exploits, and linguistic inventions have become the basis for nearly than thirty books of fiction, poetry, and criticism, translated into German, Italian, French, Hungarian, Polish, Serbian, Rumanian, Hebrew, Dutch, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, and Swahili. Federman has also been the recipient of numerous awards in the US and abroad, including the American Book Award for Smiles on Washington Square. An important theorist of contemporary writing, Federman always insisted on the integration and inseparability of memory and imagination, fact and fiction. "I have to still believe," he once said in an interview, "as I often do, that one of these days around a street corner I'm going to meet my sisters."

Reviews and Other Links
http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/catalog/show_comment/1380
http://raymondfederman.blogspot.com/
http://www.federman.com/
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/federman/