An Inconvenient Place

‘Of the three ways of observing - as witness, whose meticulous, dispassionate descriptions become the fabric of the past; as voyeur, devouring the sight of the present with limitless appetite; as seer, finding in the now intimations of things to come - Jonathan Littell chooses all three at once. He doesn’t flinch from the bare, intimate detail of Russia’s visitation of death and destruction on Ukraine. Although sometimes the reader might prefer it if he did, it’s not because Littell’s visions are naked of euphemism, but because it falls to the reader themself to clothe these events in meaning. With his companion d’Agata, Littell, so fascinated by monuments, has made one with this book.’ - James Meek, author of To Calais, In Ordinary Times

Charlotte Mandell has translated over fifty books of fiction, poetry and philosophy from French, including works by Marcel Proust, Maurice Blanchot, Abdelwahab Meddeb and Jean-Luc Nancy, and the majority of Jonathan Littell’s work, including The Kindly Ones. Her translation of Compass by Mathias Énard was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and was the recipient of the 2018 ALTA National Translation Award in Prose.

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