‘Smile for me . . . Show me your little white teeth.’ I turned my head and smiled.
Since the 1990s the French writer Christine Angot has written with provocative insistence about relationships surrounding and disrupted by incest. When she published her first book on the subject, Incest, in 1999 the audience was polarised and she quickly became the centre of public controversy regarding discussions of sexual violence. In Journey to the East of France the third of Angot’s books to be translated into English she returns to the place where her father imposed his first incestuous relationship on her.
Journey to the East of France
trans. Armine Kotin Mortimer
Available soon
978-1-0684395-7-5
12.8 × 19.8 cm
196 pp paperback
April 2027
Fiction
Forthcoming
£ 11.99
The greatest writer of French autofiction.
A chilling and astounding novel.
Her talent shines through in the diversity of tones: the detached or indignant voice mingles with the wildly intelligent thoughts of the trapped child, searching for control and meaning; the father’s petulant behaviour or self-importance resonate with the threat; we are at the very heart of distress. Yet Journey to the East of France is not driven by the energy of despair but by the power of hope, the will – mad, if you will – to be heard, like the daughter who stubbornly demanded a ‘normal’ relationship from her father, a plea that went unanswered.
About the author
Christine Angot is one of the most provocative and controversial authors writing today in France. Born in 1958 in Châteauroux, Angot studied law at the University of Reims and began writing at the age of twenty-five. Her literary works have received prizes including the Prix France Culture in 2005 (for Les Désaxés and Une partie du cœur), the Prix Flore in 2006 (for Rendez-vous) and the Prix Sade in 2012 (for Une semaine de vacances), which she refused. In 2015 she won the Prix Décembre for her novel Un Amour impossible. Journey to the East of France won the Prix Médicis. In 2024, she directed her first film, Une famille.
About the translator
Armine Kotin Mortimer PhD held a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship for 2020, and she was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiques in recognition of her distinguished work on behalf of French culture. The author of numerous scholarly publications, she has published translations of six French books: The Enchanted Clock by Julia Kristeva, Mysterious Mozart by Philippe Sollers, An Impossible Love by Christine Angot, Casanova the Irresistible by Philippe Sollers, Dostoyevsky in the Face of Death by Julia Kristeva, and Hebrew: From Sacred Language to Mother Tongue by Keren Mock. In addition, twenty-six of her translated excerpts have appeared in literary reviews.
Endorsements
The greatest writer of French autofiction.
A chilling and astounding novel.
Her talent shines through in the diversity of tones: the detached or indignant voice mingles with the wildly intelligent thoughts of the trapped child, searching for control and meaning; the father’s petulant behaviour or self-importance resonate with the threat; we are at the very heart of distress. Yet Journey to the East of France is not driven by the energy of despair but by the power of hope, the will – mad, if you will – to be heard, like the daughter who stubbornly demanded a ‘normal’ relationship from her father, a plea that went unanswered.
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