Fiction. Translated from the French by Laird Hunt. Set in a city much like Beirut in the aftermath of bloody civil war, a former mercenary relates his fate and that of others of his kind after the peace. The world is rapidly healing itself—people getting back to their lives, the city being rebuilt. But he is unable to leave the site his crimes. Rohe's narrative is striking in its understatement: much of the work's power lies in what's unsaid, what's hinted and inferred. Sentences run on and on or stop short as if they've reached a dead end. Repetition is a kind of entrenchment, a being stuck, perhaps in the density of poetry.

Author City: PARIS FRA

Oliver Rohe was born in 1972 of a German father and an Armenian mother from Lebanon. His many years abroad have left him with a certain taste for exile. As a student in Paris, he touched on a variety of disciplines (Law, Modern Languages, International Studies) before choosing journalism. In 2001-2002, he was the chief editor of the book section of the magazine Chronic'Art, where he meet Jerôme Schmidt, Maxime Berrée, and Benoît Maurer. They brought together various publishing houses, Editions imho, è®e, and Inculte, in order to create the eponymous bimonthly journal Inculte in September 2004. Oliver Rohe is also the author of Défaut d'origine (Allia, 2003).

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Laird Hunt