Seven Houses in France
  • Published: 3 November 2011
  • ISBN: 9781409028260
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

Seven Houses in France

Formats & editions
EBook
3 Nov 2011
Paperback
15 Nov 2012
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Longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2012 - a dark tale of human ambition by the European master A.S. Byatt called 'A brilliantly inventive writer'.

1903, and Captain Lalande Biran, overseeing a garrison on the banks of the Congo, has an ambition: to amass a fortune and return to the literary cafés of Paris.

His glamorous wife Christine has a further ambition: to own seven houses in France, a house for every year he has been abroad.

At the Captain’s side are an ex-legionnaire womaniser, and a servile, treacherous man who dreams of running a brothel. At their hands the jungle is transformed into a wild circus of human ambition and absurdity. But everything changes with the arrival of a new officer and brilliant marksman: the enigmatic Chrysostome Liège.
  • Published: 3 November 2011
  • ISBN: 9781409028260
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256
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About the author

Bernardo Atxaga

Bernardo Atxaga was born in Gipuzkoa in Spain in 1951 and lives in the Basque Country, writing in Basque and Spanish. He is a prizewinning novelist and poet, whose books, including Obabakoak and The Accordionist's Son, have won critical acclaim in Spain and abroad. His works have been translated into twenty-five languages.

portrait photo of Bernardo Atxaga

Also by Bernardo Atxaga

Lone Man
The Accordionist's Son
Obabakoak
The Lone Woman
See all

Praise for Seven Houses in France

Seven Houses in France is an enjoyable, somewhat frightening novel by one of Europe's best novelists... Atxaga is still the master of a complex story, told with deceptive simplicity

Michael Eaude, Independent

A brilliantly inventive writer...He understands the nature of storytelling and is at once terribly moving and wildly funny

A. S. Byatt

A dark comedy about the vanity of human desires which deftly balances compassion and cynicism

Financial Times

Atxaga’s grim and complicated story is lucidly told

Emma Hagestadt, Independent

Atxaga’s story is fresh and his treatment of violence psychologically rich

Guardian

Bizarrely funny and beautifully crafted

Times Literary Supplement

It takes a special kind of genius to transform this most unpromising of locations into a vehicle for black comedy, but that is precisely what the Basque author Bernardo Atxaga achieves in this mesmerizing novel

Simon Shaw, Mail on Sunday

Sharp

Guardian

Undeniably compelling

Daily Mail