Fiction. Translated from the French by Ingeborg M. Kohn. The narrator of KING COPHETUA, a former soldier, recalls the events surrounding the arrival at the home of his friend Jacques Nueil, a dandy, an aviator, and an avant-garde composer. It is All Saints' Day, 1917. The Great War is leading up to images of the Russian Revolution, and from Nueil's villa the narrator hears the sounds of bombs dropping in the distance. Carefully paced and mysteriously atmospheric, KING COPHETUA is inspired by vivid memory and by two images, Goya's engraving entitled "Mala Noche" and Burne-Jones's painting "King Cophetua and the Beggar Girl."

Author City: Saint-Florent-le-Vieil FRA

Born in 1910 at Saint-Florent-le-Vieil, where he lived until his death in 2007, Julien Gracq was one of France's eminent postwar writers. His oeuvre includes essays, criticism, journalism, and novels. Gracq was a majestic, retiring, and misunderstood figure in French literature. He refused the Goncourt Prize when it was awarded to him in 1951.