Odile     by Raymond Queneau, Translated by Carol Sanders Original title: Odile Original language: French Country: France   Published by Dalkey Archive Press Pub. Date: January 1, 1999 Format: Paperback, 128 pages Dimensions: (in inches): 0.35 x 8.42 x 5.43 ISBN: 1564782093 List Price: $10.95 buy now directly from the publisher Free Shipping Worldwide Published by Dalkey Archive Press Pub. Date: December 1, 1988 Format: Cloth, 128 pages ISBN: 0916583341 List Price: $20.00 buy now directly from the publisher Free Shipping Worldwide Published by Dalkey Archive Press Pub. Date: 1992 Pub. Place: UK Format: 120 pages List Price: £13.90 Not available for ordering

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"Even though I can't remember my childhood, my memory being as if ravaged by some disaster, t here nevertheless remains a series of images from the time before my birth . . . of my first twenty years, only ruins are left in a memory devastated by unhappiness."

These opening lines from Queneau's novel, first published in France in 1937, are a brill iant, moving introduction to a story about the devastating psychological effects of war, about falling in love, about politics subverting human relationships, about life in Paris during the early 1930s amid intellectuals and artists whose activities range from writing for radical magazines to conjuring the ghost of Lenin in seances. Most of all, it's about Roland Travy's agonizing search for happiness after having been conditioned to live unhappily but safely for so long, about his growing self-awareness a nd need for another human being, about his willingness to shed his fears and accept his humanity.

"Charming. . . . Deliciously funny. . . . Written in a cool detached style, full of witticism and puns, this is Queneau at his most accessible."—Publishers Weekly

"A marvelous sendup of the Surrealists of the late 1920s and early 1930s as well as a moving love story. . . . Both a madcap roman a clef . . . and a parable about the search for spiritual equilibrium and human meaning."— Kirkus Reviews

"Raymond Q ueneau's books are ambiguous fairylands in which scenes of everyday life are mingled with a melancholy that is ageless. Though they are not without bitterness, their author seems always to set his face against conclusions, and to be moved by a kind of hor ror of seriousness."—Albert Camus

"How can anyone not love Queneau?"—New Orleans Times-Picayune

"All in all, Odile is an extraordinary production, a book to be treasured."—Small Press