Fiction. Pascal Quignard recently received the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize, for his work. In ON WOODEN TABLETS, Quignard takes on the persona of a fourrth century Roman Patriarcian Matron who writes notes on wooden tablets, somewhat in the manner of Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book. She notes erotic souvenirs, jokes, scenes that have touched her, but also accounts and lists of things to do. For twenty years, "Apronenia Avitia" keeps this journal without mentioning, except in passing, the ruinous events she witnesses: the Roman Empire is crumbling, invaded by the "Barbarians" from the North as well as infiltrated from within by the Christian "party." Perhaps she does not see. Perhaps she does not want to see. Translated from the French by Bruce X.

Author City: Verneuil FRA

Pascal Quignard was born in 1948 in Verneuil. In 1994 he resigned from all his jobs. He has published eighty-four "Little Treatises," five novels, and translations from the Latin (Albucius, Porcius Latro), the Chinese (Kong-souen Long), and the Greek (Lycophron). The film All the World's Mornings was made from Quignard's novel of the same title (Graywolf Press). Two other novels are also available in English: Alb clits (The Lapis Press) and The Salon in Württenberg (Grove Weidenfeld).