This best-selling debut novel from one of France’s most exciting young writers is based on the true story of the 1949 disappearance of Air France’s Lockheed Constellation and its famous passengers On October 27, 1949, Air France’s new plane, the Constellation, launched by the extravagant Howard Hughes, welcomed thirty-eight passengers aboard. On October 28, no longer responding to air traffic controllers, the plane disappeared while trying to land on the island of Santa Maria, in the Azores. No one survived. The question Adrien Bosc’s novel asks is not so much how, but why? What were the series of tiny incidents that, in sequence, propelled the plane toward Redondo Mountain? And who were the passengers? As we recognize Marcel Cerdan, the famous boxer and lover of Edith Piaf, and we remember the musical prodigy Ginette Neveu, whose tattered violin would be found years later, the author ties together their destinies: “Hear the dead, write their small legend, and offer to these thirty-eight men and women, like so many constellations, a life and a story.”

Constellation: A Novel Based on True Events

Literature & Fiction

Bosc, Adrien

Literary

Other Press

Constellation

Contemporary

Serpent's Tail

'A beautiful book about the best minds of a generation and the devastation of war - an outrageous voyage from the past that speaks eloquently to our present' Deborah Levy\nMarch 1941. A converted cargo ship, the Paul-Lemerle, left Marseille on a voyage to the Caribbean, fleeing Vichy France and the devastation of the war. The ship was filled with immigrants from the East, exiled Spanish Republicans, Jews, stateless persons and decadent artists. Among them were Claude Lévi-Strauss, the painter Wifredo Lam, the writers Anna Seghers and André Breton, and the Russian revolutionary Victor Serge.\nCan we know the taste of pineapple from listening to travellers' tales? asks Bosc in the follow-up to his bestselling debut. Can we ever feel the sensation of history? Mixing the documentary techniques of history, the imaginative leaps of fiction and the cool analysis of the essay, Bosc takes us from Marseille to Casablanca to Martinique and on to New York, to tell an evocative story of migration, cultural crisis and the intellectual cost of the rise of fascism.

Outrageous Horizon

March 1941. A converted cargo ship, the Paul-Lemerle, left Marseille on a voyage to the Caribbean, fleeing Vichy France and the devastation of the war. The ship was filled with immigrants from the East, exiled Spanish Republicans, Jews, stateless persons and decadent artists. Among them were Claude Lévi-Strauss, the painter Wifredo Lam, the writers Anna Seghers and André Breton, and the Russian revolutionary Victor Serge. Can we know the taste of pineapple from listening to travellers' tales? asks Bosc in the follow-up to his bestselling debut. Can we ever feel the sensation of history? Mixing the documentary techniques of history, the imaginative leaps of fiction and the cool analysis of the essay, Bosc takes us from Marseille to Casablanca to Martinique and on to New York, to tell an evocative story of migration, cultural crisis and the intellectual cost of the rise of fascism.

Un voyage: Marseille-Rio 1941

Assayas, Olivier

Stock

Le 27 octobre 1949, le nouvel avion d Air France, le Constellation, lancé par l extravagant M. Howard Hughes, accueille trente-sept passagers. Le 28 octobre, l avion ne répond plus à la tour de contrôle. Il a disparu en descendant sur l île Santa Maria, dans l archipel des Açores. Aucun survivant. La question que pose Adrien Bosc dans cet ambitieux premier roman n est pas tant comment, mais pourquoi ? Quel est l enchaînement d infimes causalités qui, mises bout à bout, ont précipité l avion vers le mont Redondo ? Quel est le hasard objectif, notion chère aux surréalistes, qui rend nécessaire ce tombeau d acier ? Et qui sont les passagers ? Si l on connaît Marcel Cerdan, l amant boxeur d Édith Piaf, si l on se souvient de cette musicienne prodige que fut Ginette Neveu, dont une partie du violon sera retrouvée des années après, l auteur lie les destins entre eux. « Entendre les morts, écrire leur légende minuscule et offrir à quarante huit hommes et femmes, comme autant de constellations, vie et récit.

Genre Fiction

La columna

Tusquets Editores S.A.

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