On the Ceiling tells the story of a young man who wears a chair upside
down on his head. He falls in love with a young woman named Méline, and
soon he and his friends move in with her and her family. They are
disappointed by the life they find at Méline's, however, and in search
of something better they make the collective decision to move to the
ceiling of her house, where they expect to find a more orderly, more
rational, and less encumbered existence. Éric Chevillard's trademark is
inventing characters who have little choice but to dream up the most
hopelessly outlandish and breathtakingly brilliant schemes if they are
to survive the rigors of their existence. He is fascinated by the
imperious need we all feel to make life bearable and by the lengths to
which we are willing to go in that pursuit. The characters in On the
Ceiling are prepared to go rather further than most of us. Chevillard,
one of the most inventive young authors on the French literary scene, is
the author of eight novels. Jordan Stump is associate professor of
French at the University of Nebraska. He is the author of Naming and
Unnaming: On Raymond Queneau and the translator of four novels by Marie
Redonnet-Hôtel Splendid, Forever Valley, Rose Mellie Rose, and
Nevermore-and of Éric Chevillard's The Crab Nebula and Patrick Modiano's
Out of the Dark (all available from the University of Nebraska Press).
