La Ronde et autres faits divers (1982) is the title of a set of short stories written in French by French Nobel laureateJ. M. G. Le Clézio and translated into English as The Round & Other Cold Hard Facts.
Geographical Background
The reviewer of this book from the New York Times finds the protagonists[1] of the 11 stories in The Round & Other Cold Hard Facts to be underprivileged although they are residents of a very privileged area: the French Riviera.[2]
Critique
Uneven
The reviewer of this book from Barnes & Noble wrote that even though none of the eleven short-stories are out of the ordinary, the author does however find strange goings on.[3] This reviewer surmises that this collection of stories is uneven and the style of writing can make for monotonous reading.
It is quite often painfully hard to read
According to John Pilling [4] there is insistent use of the present tense used throughout the book that produced in the mind of this reviewer "a kind of literary indigestion". He went on to mention that a person could "fear the snare of thinking that this sort of literary indigestion is therefore good for the person reading!"[5]
There is suffering in every story
sometimes just because the protagonist is lonely
maybe has been robbed (injured or raped)
some vagabonds try to smuggle across the Italian border
two girls run away from home
how a child becomes a thief
a woman gives birth alone on the carpet of her mobile home
Also published as La Ronde Et Autres Faits Divers: [Nouvelles] (Le Chemin)
Second French Edition
Le Clézio, J. M. G. (1991). La Ronde Et Autres Faits Divers (Collectin Folio) (Mass Market Paperback) (in French). Paris: Editions Flammarion. p. 281. ISBN978-2-07-038237-8.
Also published by Gallimard Education as Ronde Et Autres Faits Divers (La) (Collectin Folio) in a Mass Market Paperback format
Third French Edition
Le Clézio, J. M. G. (1990-01-01). La Ronde et Autres Faits Divers (in French). Paris: Folio Schoenhof's Foreign Books, Incorporated. p. 281. ISBN978-2-07-038237-8.
Also published as Ronde Et Autres Faits Divers (La) (Collectin Folio) by Gallimard Education
Fourth French Edition
Le Clézio, J. M. G. (1990-10-01). La Ronde et Autres Faits Divers (Nobel Prize Literature 2008) (in French). Paris: French & European Pubns. p. 281. ISBN978-0-8288-3708-8.
First English translation
Le Clézio, J. M. G.; Translated by C. Dickson. The Round and Other Cold Hard Facts. Lincoln, Nebraska,USA: University of Nebraska Press. p. 281. ISBN978-0-8032-2946-4.
Audio Edition in French
There is a spoken version of "La ronde et autres faits divers"CD & MP3 as read in French by Bernard Giraudeau.[6]
Second English Edition
Le Clézio, J. M. G.; Translated by C. Dickson (2002-09-01). The Round and Other Cold Hard Facts. Lincoln, Nebraska,USA: Bison Books. p. 214. ISBN978-0-8032-8007-6.
References
^who include illegal immigrants, bikers and runaway teenagers
^writing in the Times Literary Supplement of 1982-10-08
^There reviewer ,John Pilling, also noted that for him there was something intriguing ... and exciting about Le Clézio's ability to transform ... social realism through a formal strategy (even though this formal strategy in writing is at odds with the material Le Clézio writes about)