{"title":"Books by Pascal Quignard","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781803093659","title":"The Roving Shadows","description":"A bold and adventurous work of literature that explores the relationship between reading, writing, sex, and death.  The first book in Pascal Quignard’s Last Kingdom series, The Roving Shadows can be read as a long meditation on reading and writing that strives to situate these otherwise innocuous activities in a profound relationship to sex and death. Writing and reading can in fact be linked to our animal natures and artistic strivings, to primal forces and culturally persistent fascinations. With dexterity and inventiveness, Quignard weaves together historical anecdotes, folktales from the East and West, fragments of myth, and speculative historical reconstructions. The whole, written in a musical style not far removed from that of Couperin, whose piano composition Les Ombres errantes lends the book its title, coheres into a work of literature that reverberates in the psyche long after one has laid it down.   The Roving Shadows is a rare and wondrous tour de force that cements Quignard’s reputation in contemporary world literature. Available now in English, this boldly adventurous work will find a new and welcoming audience.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56306811502965,"sku":"9781803093659","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781803093659_c87c5c5f-6fb5-4d74-ada4-a2cf3fe33955.jpg?v=1786026614"},{"product_id":"9781803093611","title":"The Silent Crossing","description":"A haunting homage to life and liberty, to society and solitude, and to the binding and unbinding that constitute the weft of our lives.    Drawing on materials from across many cultures, Pascal Quignard makes an effort to establish shared human values as the breeding ground for a modern Enlightenment. Considering atheism as a spiritual liberation, suicide as a free act, and the rejection of society as a free choice, the author explores philosophical themes that have run through human civilizations—most often as heresies—from our earliest days. In his search for freedom, Quignard questions the binding dependency of religion, querying how, in a world where all forms of society presuppose that someone (or some collective) is looking over our shoulders, we can be free. These reflections, he implies, are the essential spiritual exercise for our times.     Few voices in contemporary French literature are more distinct than that of Quignard. By reading this fragmentary, episodic assemblage of intimate experiences and borrowed tales, we open up a space of liberty, creating for the reader space for meditation and, perhaps, liberation.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56306875695477,"sku":"9781803093611","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781803093611_fe1c015d-2447-4cb3-acc9-a11d3f7a1afc.jpg?v=1786026610"},{"product_id":"9781939663931","title":"The Answer to Lord Chandos","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIn defense of the poetic, Pascal Quignard pens an impassioned reply to von Hofmannsthal’s despondent Lord Chandos\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 1902, Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s \u003ci\u003eLord Chandos Letter\u003c\/i\u003e articulated a deep crisis of faith in language. Having “lost completely the ability to think or speak of anything coherently,” the titular character abandons literature in favor of silence. In \u003ci\u003eThe Answer to Lord Chandos\u003c\/i\u003e, a text that was meticulously crafted over 41 years, Pascal Quignard passionately challenges this withdrawal and urges us not to forsake the power of poetry. His exhortation meditates on Emily Brontë, Handel, Rembrandt and more to demonstrate how literature rejuvenates our connection to the universe. In an introduction to this first English edition, French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy illuminates the core question animating this debate, which has resonated within literature since its inception: can poetry give access to the real? Quignard’s resounding answer offers a testament to the immense value of literary expression.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePascal Quignard\u003c\/b\u003e (born 1948) is the author of \u003ci\u003eA Terrace in Rome\u003c\/i\u003e and more than 60 fiction and nonfiction titles. He has won both the Prix Goncourt, France’s top literary prize, and the Formentor Prize for Letters.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309151662453,"sku":"9781939663931","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781939663931_ccf53421-65ee-4f2f-8dfb-4029f73ab34d.jpg?v=1786030756"},{"product_id":"9781803095554","title":"The Paradisiacs – Last Kingdom IV","description":"Pascal Quignard delves into the uncanny bond between recognition and loss, outlining how our earliest experiences shape our longing for a paradise we can never reclaim.    What if paradise was not a place we lost, but one we never truly knew? In Paradisiacs, the fourth volume of the Last Kingdom series, Pascal Quignard meditates on the nature of paradise—not as an Eden to which we might return, but as a place of origin that lingers in myth. Through his signature blend of ancient texts, Paleolithic art, psychoanalysis, and personal reflection, Quignard explores our primal longing for recognition. He traces this yearning back to the erstwhile, a prenatal paradise from which we are expelled at birth, and examines how resemblance and recognition shape our identities.    At once poetic and philosophical, Paradisiacs invites readers into Quignard’s singular world, where language and history coalesce into a profound rumination on the origins of selfhood. With John Taylor’s masterly translation, this latest installment of Last Kingdom is a hypnotic and revelatory reading experience for those drawn to the intersections of philosophy and the ineffable.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56369205510517,"sku":"9781803095554","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781803095554_dc5d9120-4f5b-4c98-a0d1-b2c3e95b5792.jpg?v=1786034442"},{"product_id":"9781916658189","title":"Happy the Hours","description":"Hours. Landscapes. Seasons. Life. A musical meditation in poetic prose.   'At any given moment in time', writes Quignard, 'a work receives its sudden audition. Bach and Mendelssohn. Froberger in Bach. A bird in Messiaen.'Like Bach, Quignard is anachronistic. In his remarkable body of work, the accomplished musician and writer, who once began writing a thesis on the language of Bergson, probes incessantly the mystery of time. Happy the Hours is the epitome of this probing, a perpetual beginning.   Pascal Quignard is laureate of the Grand Prix du roman de l'Academie francaise (2000), the Prix Goncourt (2002) and the Prix Formentor (2023), amongst many other prestigious awards.   Happy the Hours (Les Heures Heureuses, Albin Michel, 2023) is the twelfth in his Last Kingdom series.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56369367548277,"sku":"9781916658189","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781916658189_ba2e37f2-12c0-42bd-b5ea-8acb321e3b5f.jpg?v=1786030453"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-pascal-quignard.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}