Published in English for the first time, 28 Paradises is the
marriage of prose and painting by Nobel-prize winning author Patrick
Modiano and his partner, the illustrator Dominique Zehrfuss.
28 Paradises is a rare book: it reveals not only the individual
talents of the authors, Modiano and Zehrfuss, but also the depth of the
couple's creative union. Sensitively translated into English for the
first time by Damion Searls, 28 Paradises captures the exquisite
sadness of waking from a beautiful dream. There are twenty-eight dreams
in this book, or perhaps one dream in twenty-eight parts--visions of
paradise imagined by Zehrfuss during a time of deep sadness. Captured
first in Zehrfuss's brightly colored gouaches, each paradise was then
refashioned as a poem by Modiano.
Zehrfuss's paintings are Edens in miniature, and rather than describe
them outright, Modiano dreams himself into these reveries in quiet,
understated verse. The reader enters this shared realm in an experience
less like paging through a book and more like slipping into a shared
world. These paradises are wishes for moments when a painting, or a
poem, or a lover--perhaps they are not so different--relieves the
loneliness of being human. As Modiano writes with a touch of
wistfulness, "The Lilliputian painted her paradises / And I / Next to
her / Wrote a poem." A pure example of ekphrastic writing--poetry
inspired by paintings--this book shows how writing and visual art can
together create a unique emotional experience.
First published by Editions de l'Olivier/ Le Seuil in 2005
