Antoine Volodine
Author of Radiant Terminus
About the Author
Image credit: Antoine Volodine (2014) By Librairie Mollat, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68763253
Works by Antoine Volodine
Biographie comparée de Jorian Murgrave - Un navire de nulle part - Rituel du mépris - Des enfers fabuleux (2003) 5 copies
Ángeles menores 1 copy
défense et illustration du post-exotisme en vingt leçons avec Antoine Volodine (2008) — Author — 1 copy
Repères pour le naufrage 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Volodine, Antoine
- Other names
- Draeger, Manuela
Kronauer, Elli
Bassmann, Lutz - Birthdate
- 1950
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- France
- Birthplace
- Chalon-sur-Saône, France
- Associated Place (for map)
- Chalon-sur-Saône, France
Members
Reviews
The trouble with reading fiction set in irradiated postapocalyptic Russia is that it gives me nightmares. Can it be a coincidence that I dreamed my entire face was covered in tiny tumours while reading a novel in which everyone has radiation sickness? [b:Radiant Terminus|29633875|Radiant Terminus|Antoine Volodine|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1460506113l/29633875._SY75_.jpg|42568732] definitely has a nightmarish quality and pervasive atmosphere of show more doom. Are the characters alive or dead? Is there a difference? The book opens with three comrades who have survived the downfall of the Second Soviet Union dying of radiation poisoning. While attempting to survive, or while dead but still mobile, they variously encounter a train full of soldiers and prisoners searching for a gulag and a village ruled by a terrifying immortal wizard. The immortal wizard dominates the narrative via his ability to enter people's dreams and subject them to his poetry.
Although it reminded me of [b:The Slynx|310722|The Slynx|Tatyana Tolstaya|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1632586628l/310722._SY75_.jpg|3535], [b:Radiant Terminus|29633875|Radiant Terminus|Antoine Volodine|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1460506113l/29633875._SY75_.jpg|42568732] is a French novel disguised as a Russian novel. Antoine Volodine is one pseudonym of a (seemingly anonymous?) French novelist. I think this is elided by reading the English translation. I enjoyed the bits of wordplay that the translation captures:
As well as being a suitably grim and ominous postapocalyptic novel, [b:Radiant Terminus|29633875|Radiant Terminus|Antoine Volodine|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1460506113l/29633875._SY75_.jpg|42568732] appears to comment on literary tropes. Of particular note is the metatextuality about rape, which is both discussed and occurs repeatedly. At this point a woman is trying to reconstruct the angry feminist literature of the past, casting her sister as the victim:
I've never come across a novel interrogating its own depictions of rape in this way before. I'm not really sure what to make of it, but definitely found it interesting. [b:Radiant Terminus|29633875|Radiant Terminus|Antoine Volodine|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1460506113l/29633875._SY75_.jpg|42568732] definitely succeeds at creating an atmosphere of catastrophe and collapse. I will not soon forget the extremely creepy sequence in which Kronauer walks slowly around the Soviet building with his rifle, shooting strange figures with bags over their heads, one of which might be himself. What a disorientatingly dreamlike scene. The imagery and descriptions are pleasant verging on lyrical for plants, but grotesque and horrible for humans and anything they created. The ending appears to be another metatextual comment, rather than the conclusion to any kind of plot. Overall it adds up to a distinctive reading experience, albeit not one I'd recommend without caveats. If you have an interest in postapocalyptic and/or metatextual literature, you are likely to find [b:Radiant Terminus|29633875|Radiant Terminus|Antoine Volodine|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1460506113l/29633875._SY75_.jpg|42568732] rewarding. If you appreciate extremely grim vibes, likewise. If you're after plot and characterisation, however, this is not the place to find them. show less
Although it reminded me of [b:The Slynx|310722|The Slynx|Tatyana Tolstaya|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1632586628l/310722._SY75_.jpg|3535], [b:Radiant Terminus|29633875|Radiant Terminus|Antoine Volodine|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1460506113l/29633875._SY75_.jpg|42568732] is a French novel disguised as a Russian novel. Antoine Volodine is one pseudonym of a (seemingly anonymous?) French novelist. I think this is elided by reading the English translation. I enjoyed the bits of wordplay that the translation captures:
If there was something he had to do in the next day or so, it was to leave the Levanidovo, leave them all in the dirty and crazy hands of their president and progenitor, and look elsewhere for a refuge to die, pretend to die, pretend to live, or practice a humdrum variation on survival, sousvival, or surmorial.
As well as being a suitably grim and ominous postapocalyptic novel, [b:Radiant Terminus|29633875|Radiant Terminus|Antoine Volodine|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1460506113l/29633875._SY75_.jpg|42568732] appears to comment on literary tropes. Of particular note is the metatextuality about rape, which is both discussed and occurs repeatedly. At this point a woman is trying to reconstruct the angry feminist literature of the past, casting her sister as the victim:
Here is a new rape scene. Another one. I've systematically avoided describing them in detail. Alluding to them is enough. For victims, it's unbearable. For witnesses, it's equally unbearable. We're confronted with the filthiness of the cock's language, at one moment of another we have to go along with the exhalations of the cock's language, we have the impression of sharing something with the rapists. Into every description of rape comes an element of complicity. I've always avoided that and it's not because I know Myriam Umraik that I'm going to watch this scene objectively, as a witness, or that I'm going to plunge back into the horror subjectively, incarnating myself within her.
I've never come across a novel interrogating its own depictions of rape in this way before. I'm not really sure what to make of it, but definitely found it interesting. [b:Radiant Terminus|29633875|Radiant Terminus|Antoine Volodine|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1460506113l/29633875._SY75_.jpg|42568732] definitely succeeds at creating an atmosphere of catastrophe and collapse. I will not soon forget the extremely creepy sequence in which Kronauer walks slowly around the Soviet building with his rifle, shooting strange figures with bags over their heads, one of which might be himself. What a disorientatingly dreamlike scene. The imagery and descriptions are pleasant verging on lyrical for plants, but grotesque and horrible for humans and anything they created. The ending appears to be another metatextual comment, rather than the conclusion to any kind of plot. Overall it adds up to a distinctive reading experience, albeit not one I'd recommend without caveats. If you have an interest in postapocalyptic and/or metatextual literature, you are likely to find [b:Radiant Terminus|29633875|Radiant Terminus|Antoine Volodine|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1460506113l/29633875._SY75_.jpg|42568732] rewarding. If you appreciate extremely grim vibes, likewise. If you're after plot and characterisation, however, this is not the place to find them. show less
When I finished this novel I began to cry.
But: I have no idea what this novel is supposed to mean. I could read up about it, I suppose. But even with more knowledge, I'm not sure there would be a way for me to have loved it more, or to have been touched by it more, or to have been made to think more, than the choice I made, which was to read this very complicated and mysterious novel as a dialogue, a 1-1 relationship between me and the words on the page.
So how to describe this complicated show more knot of feeling, now that I've reached the end?
What I'm feeling has to do with a sense that this novel stands for the permanence of human relationships--that our thoughts and feelings and actions as thinking creatures can create a reality that endures every kind of assault.
Described here is a horrific world. And yet the characters trapped in this horrific world never fully despair. And the story itself, however violent and seemingly hopeless, always holds out in the end a thread of fragile hope that humanity (not just people, but their best selves) will endure. show less
But: I have no idea what this novel is supposed to mean. I could read up about it, I suppose. But even with more knowledge, I'm not sure there would be a way for me to have loved it more, or to have been touched by it more, or to have been made to think more, than the choice I made, which was to read this very complicated and mysterious novel as a dialogue, a 1-1 relationship between me and the words on the page.
So how to describe this complicated show more knot of feeling, now that I've reached the end?
What I'm feeling has to do with a sense that this novel stands for the permanence of human relationships--that our thoughts and feelings and actions as thinking creatures can create a reality that endures every kind of assault.
Described here is a horrific world. And yet the characters trapped in this horrific world never fully despair. And the story itself, however violent and seemingly hopeless, always holds out in the end a thread of fragile hope that humanity (not just people, but their best selves) will endure. show less
I inadvertently did myself a good turn by reading Volodine's Writers directly after reading Ben Lerner's 10:04. Ostensibly their subject is the same: writers and writing, so they can both be classed in a postmodern literary metafiction subgenre together, but they treat the matter so differently that it seems unfair to class them under the same umbrella. Besides the fact that both authors blend fact and fiction in their work, they have little else in common. Ben Lerner blends fact and fiction show more by drawing on his own life, making himself the point of interest, but Volodine eschews such personal attention. Volodine is not even the author's name, it is one of several pseudonyms employed. Volodine himself is a fiction, and he has created a "fictional-yet-real" literary movement called "post-exoticism" that he expands on throughout his stories.
Volodine is imminently more serious, both insofar as his worlds are darker and grittier (none of the writers who serve as main characters of the 7 stories are successful), but also insofar as he exercises his imagination and extends BEYOND himself as a writer. Ben Lerner is a showman, a poet turned novelist, flexing his muscles in front of the mirror that is the critic's circle. Volodine is a workhorse and he writes because he must GET IT OUT.
The writers of Volodine's slim book of short stories also must “get it out.” They are imprisoned, mad, exiled, unknown, unsung, ordinary, unintelligent, uneducated. They have been political assassins, factory workers. They sometimes write on scraps of paper, but they just as often ‘write’ aloud in their jail cells, or standing before the abyss. Every one of Volodine's characters is always speaking out over an unhearing void--they speak to no one and anyone and to themselves. They speak to you, if you are reading it I suppose, but they are unaware of your audience. This reader almost feels guilty witnessing them in their barest moments, but there is a sort of bravery in them that offers the slightest bit of consolation.
While Lerner is an aesthete in the Romantic style, circling in on himself, Volodine has an Aesthetic Theory that is grounded in suffering, and the raw emotion that compels us to speak out in the face of it. Unlike Lerner’s narrator, Volodine’s writers are not privileged, they are totalizingly disenfranchised. And yet still they create.
All of the stories are good, but they build strength as the little book progresses. I found "Acknowledgments" to be a needed delight after the dismal first stories in a madhouse/jail. Volodine has a seemingly endless supply of improbable unique character names, which he gets to make ample use of in this writer's overindulgent and increasingly absurdist "Acknowledgments." Readers interested in Volodine’s concept of “post-exotic literature" will find “The Strategy of Silence in the Work of Bogdan Tarassiev” and “The Theory of the Image According to Maria Three-Thirteen” of particular interest. The latter I found thoroughly haunting. The volume closes with a story about a man who discovers that the tale of his birth was a lie, and then becomes compelled to write it ‘correctly.’ All told, a lot of literary power is packed into a mere 108 pages. Volodine is officially on my radar. Long live post-exoticism! show less
Volodine is imminently more serious, both insofar as his worlds are darker and grittier (none of the writers who serve as main characters of the 7 stories are successful), but also insofar as he exercises his imagination and extends BEYOND himself as a writer. Ben Lerner is a showman, a poet turned novelist, flexing his muscles in front of the mirror that is the critic's circle. Volodine is a workhorse and he writes because he must GET IT OUT.
The writers of Volodine's slim book of short stories also must “get it out.” They are imprisoned, mad, exiled, unknown, unsung, ordinary, unintelligent, uneducated. They have been political assassins, factory workers. They sometimes write on scraps of paper, but they just as often ‘write’ aloud in their jail cells, or standing before the abyss. Every one of Volodine's characters is always speaking out over an unhearing void--they speak to no one and anyone and to themselves. They speak to you, if you are reading it I suppose, but they are unaware of your audience. This reader almost feels guilty witnessing them in their barest moments, but there is a sort of bravery in them that offers the slightest bit of consolation.
While Lerner is an aesthete in the Romantic style, circling in on himself, Volodine has an Aesthetic Theory that is grounded in suffering, and the raw emotion that compels us to speak out in the face of it. Unlike Lerner’s narrator, Volodine’s writers are not privileged, they are totalizingly disenfranchised. And yet still they create.
All of the stories are good, but they build strength as the little book progresses. I found "Acknowledgments" to be a needed delight after the dismal first stories in a madhouse/jail. Volodine has a seemingly endless supply of improbable unique character names, which he gets to make ample use of in this writer's overindulgent and increasingly absurdist "Acknowledgments." Readers interested in Volodine’s concept of “post-exotic literature" will find “The Strategy of Silence in the Work of Bogdan Tarassiev” and “The Theory of the Image According to Maria Three-Thirteen” of particular interest. The latter I found thoroughly haunting. The volume closes with a story about a man who discovers that the tale of his birth was a lie, and then becomes compelled to write it ‘correctly.’ All told, a lot of literary power is packed into a mere 108 pages. Volodine is officially on my radar. Long live post-exoticism! show less
I have suffered a reading slump recently which I can only blame on Volodine's Terminus Radieux, not because it is a bad novel, but because it is the most depressing novel that I have read in a long time. So here are some bullet points as to why I found it such a struggle to get through:
It is a dystopian novel, where even staying alive seems to be a pointless exercise.
It takes place in Russia - a post nuclear Russia.
Characters seem to be neither dead nor alive, but something in between.
The show more prose is circular with very few events and when something does happen it is liable to be described again.
It is a novel of over 600 pages (I read the french original and so I might have lost something in the translation) where the situation seemingly, gets worse and worse.
Kronauer; a soldier and two colleagues have escaped from the Orbise a collective that was functioning as a capital of the region. It had been attacked by barbarians. Everybody is suffering from radiation sickness. The three have been on the run for about a month, have run out of water and collapsed within sight of some railway tracks. The woman Vassilissa Marachvili has been carried on Kronauer's back for some time and she is nearly dead, slipping in and out of consciousness. A train consisting of four wagons containing soldiers comes down the track and stops nearby. It is manned by soldiers half of whom are very dead, some are almost alive and all are sick. The three comrades remain hidden, but Kronauer decides to make for some nearby woods in a search for water. He eventually makes it to a Kolkhoze (an agricultural collective) and becomes a semi prisoner of the President.
The President Solovièï practises some kind of mind control and has become immune and possibly immortal due to radiation poisoning. His partner Mémé Oudgoul has become notorious as one of the few people who also survives the radiation. They are encamped on a nuclear rector/outlet and have three daughters with whom Solvieï has incestuous relationships. He exercises control over the few inhabitants by nightmarish dreamscapes and is jealous of any unwelcome approaches to his daughters. Everybody is sick. Time passes, no one is really sure if they are alive or dead, the sun is almost blotted out, everything is grey and cold, daylight is decreasing and the creatures that seem to be benefiting are the carrion crows.
If ever a book celebrates the idea that darkness is coming then it is Terminus Radieux. Reading dystopian novels at a time when we are on the doorstep of a climate catastrophe is not everybody's idea of fun reading, but added to that the distinct possibility of nuclear war in Europe and one can easily for-see the future of our planet in the world that is described by Volodine. The novel is effective because it creates a powerful atmospheric force that destroys all hope of a return to lighter times. Is our future on this planet as bleak as Volodine claims, well if so I suggest you read his novel on a bright sunny day when the birds are singing. It should be banned as winter reading in Scandinavia or anywhere north of Alaska.
A difficult novel to rate, as an exercise in dystopian fiction then possibly a five star read. It is however a struggle and my enjoyment limits it to 3.5. show less
It is a dystopian novel, where even staying alive seems to be a pointless exercise.
It takes place in Russia - a post nuclear Russia.
Characters seem to be neither dead nor alive, but something in between.
The show more prose is circular with very few events and when something does happen it is liable to be described again.
It is a novel of over 600 pages (I read the french original and so I might have lost something in the translation) where the situation seemingly, gets worse and worse.
Kronauer; a soldier and two colleagues have escaped from the Orbise a collective that was functioning as a capital of the region. It had been attacked by barbarians. Everybody is suffering from radiation sickness. The three have been on the run for about a month, have run out of water and collapsed within sight of some railway tracks. The woman Vassilissa Marachvili has been carried on Kronauer's back for some time and she is nearly dead, slipping in and out of consciousness. A train consisting of four wagons containing soldiers comes down the track and stops nearby. It is manned by soldiers half of whom are very dead, some are almost alive and all are sick. The three comrades remain hidden, but Kronauer decides to make for some nearby woods in a search for water. He eventually makes it to a Kolkhoze (an agricultural collective) and becomes a semi prisoner of the President.
The President Solovièï practises some kind of mind control and has become immune and possibly immortal due to radiation poisoning. His partner Mémé Oudgoul has become notorious as one of the few people who also survives the radiation. They are encamped on a nuclear rector/outlet and have three daughters with whom Solvieï has incestuous relationships. He exercises control over the few inhabitants by nightmarish dreamscapes and is jealous of any unwelcome approaches to his daughters. Everybody is sick. Time passes, no one is really sure if they are alive or dead, the sun is almost blotted out, everything is grey and cold, daylight is decreasing and the creatures that seem to be benefiting are the carrion crows.
If ever a book celebrates the idea that darkness is coming then it is Terminus Radieux. Reading dystopian novels at a time when we are on the doorstep of a climate catastrophe is not everybody's idea of fun reading, but added to that the distinct possibility of nuclear war in Europe and one can easily for-see the future of our planet in the world that is described by Volodine. The novel is effective because it creates a powerful atmospheric force that destroys all hope of a return to lighter times. Is our future on this planet as bleak as Volodine claims, well if so I suggest you read his novel on a bright sunny day when the birds are singing. It should be banned as winter reading in Scandinavia or anywhere north of Alaska.
A difficult novel to rate, as an exercise in dystopian fiction then possibly a five star read. It is however a struggle and my enjoyment limits it to 3.5. show less
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