AUTHOR’S NOTE
TO WRITE THIS STORY I consulted many books, including the following, which I found particularly helpful: Boniface de Castellane, L’Art d’être pauvre. Mémoires, G. Crès et Cie, Paris, 1925; Jacques-Chalom Des Cordes and Véronique Fromanger Des Cordes, Rembrandt Bugatti. Catalogue raisonné, Les Éditions de l’Amateur, Paris, 1987; Philippe Dejean, Carlo, Rembrandt, Ettore, Jean Bugatti, Rizzoli International Publications, New York, 1982; André Demaison, Le Livre des enfants sauvages, André Bonne, Paris, 1953; Remy de Gourmont, Epilogues. Réflexions sur la vie. Volume complémentaire: 1905-1912, Mercure de France, Paris, 1913; Edward Horswell, Rembrandt Bugatti: Life in Sculpture, Sladmore Gallery Editions, London, 2004; Paul Léautaud, Journal littéraire, Mercure de France, Paris, vol. I: 1893-1906, 1954; and André Salmon, Souvenirs sans fin, Gallimard, Paris, vol. II: Deuxième époque (1908-1920), 1956.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Elephant Begging, 1906
Hamadryas Baboon, 1910
Two Antelope, 1911
Hippopotamus, 1905
Young Giraffe Drinking, 1907
Two Flamingos, 1912
Python, 1906
Leopard, 1911
EDGARDO FRANZOSINI, born in 1952 near Lake Como, is the author of five novels. The Animal Gazer won two distinguished Italian literary awards in 2016, the Premio Comisso and the Premio Dessi. He lives in Milan.
MICHAEL F. MOORE has translated works by Alessandro Manzoni, Alberto Moravia and Primo Levi. Prior to becoming an interpreter at the Permanent Mission of Italy to the United Nations, he studied sculpture at the Brera Academy in Milan.
THE MADELEINE PROJECT BY CLARA BEAUDOUX
A young woman moves into a Paris apartment and discovers a storage room filled with the belongings of the previous owner, a certain Madeleine who died in her late nineties, and whose treasured possessions nobody seems to want. In an audacious act of journalism driven by personal curiosity and humane tenderness, Clara Beaudoux embarks on The Madeleine Project, documenting what she finds on Twitter with text and photographs, introducing the world to an unsung 20th century figure.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-madeleine-project/
A VERY FRENCH CHRISTMAS
A continuation of the very popular Very Christmas Series, this collection brings together the best French Christmas stories of all time in an elegant and vibrant collection featuring classics by Guy de Maupassant and Alphonse Daudet, plus stories by the esteemed twentieth century author Irène Némirovsky and contemporary writers Dominique Fabre and Jean-Philippe Blondel. With a holiday spirit conveyed through sparkling Paris streets, opulent feasts, wandering orphans, flickering desire, and more than a little wine, this collection proves that the French have mastered Christmas.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/a-very-french-christmas/
ADUA BY IGIABA SCEGO
Adua, an immigrant from Somalia to Italy, has lived in Rome for nearly forty years. She came seeking freedom from a strict father and an oppressive regime, but her dreams of film stardom ended in shame. Now that the civil war in Somalia is over, her homeland calls her. She must decide whether to return and reclaim her inheritance, but also how to take charge of her own story and build a future.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/adua/
IF VENICE DIES BY SALVATORE SETTIS
Internationally renowned art historian Salvatore Settis ignites a new debate about the Pearl of the Adriatic and cultural patrimony at large. In this fiery blend of history and cultural analysis, Settis argues that “hit-and-run” visitors are turning Venice and other landmark urban settings into shopping malls and theme parks. This is a passionate plea to secure the soul of Venice, written with consummate authority, wide-ranging erudition and élan.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/if-venice-dies/
A VERY RUSSIAN CHRISTMAS
This is Russian Christmas celebrated in supreme pleasure and pain by the greatest of writers, from Dostoevsky and Tolstoy to Chekhov and Teffi. The dozen stories in this collection will satisfy every reader, and with their wit, humor, and tenderness, packed full of sentimental songs, footmen, whirling winds, solitary nights, snow drifts, and hopeful children, the collection proves that Nobody Does Christmas Like the Russians.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/a-very-russian-christmas/
THE MADONNA OF NOTRE DAME BY ALEXIS RAGOUGNEAU
Fifty thousand people jam into Notre Dame Cathedral to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption. The next morning, a beautiful young woman clothed in white kneels at prayer in a cathedral side chapel. But when someone accidentally bumps against her, her body collapses. She has been murdered. This thrilling novel illuminates shadowy corners of the world’s most famous cathedral, shedding light on good and evil with suspense, compassion and wry humor.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/madonna-notre-dame/
THE YEAR OF THE COMET BY SERGEI LEBEDEV
A story of a Russian boyhood and coming of age as the Soviet Union is on the brink of collapse. Lebedev depicts a vast empire coming apart at the seams, transforming a very public moment into something tender and personal, and writes with stunning beauty and shattering insight about childhood and the growing consciousness of a boy in the world.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/year-of-the-comet/
MOVING THE PALACE BY CHARIF MAJDALANI
A young Lebanese adventurer explores the wilds of Africa, encountering an eccentric English colonel in Sudan and enlisting in his service. In this lush chronicle of far-flung adventure, the military recruit crosses paths with a compatriot who has dismantled a sumptuous palace and is transporting it across the continent on a camel caravan. This is a captivating modern-day Odyssey in the tradition of Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/moving-the-palace/
THE 6:41 TO PARIS BY JEAN-PHILIPPE BLONDEL
Cécile, a stylish 47-year-old, has spent the weekend visiting her parents outside Paris. By Monday morning, she’s exhausted. These trips back home are stressful and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it’s soon occupied by a man she recognizes as Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation 30 years ago. In the fraught hour and a half that ensues, Cécile and Philippe hurtle towards the French capital in a psychological thriller about the pain and promise of past romance.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-641-to-paris/
ON THE RUN WITH MARY BY JONATHAN BARROW
Shining moments of tender beauty punctuate this story of a youth on the run after escaping from an elite English boarding school. At London’s Euston Station, the narrator meets a talking dachshund named Mary and together they’re off on escapades through posh Mayfair streets and jaunts in a Rolls-Royce. But the youth soon realizes that the seemingly sweet dog is a handful; an alcoholic, nymphomaniac, drug-addicted mess who can’t stay out of pubs or off the dance floor. On the Run with Mary mirrors the horrors and the joys of the terrible 20th century.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/on-the-run-with-mary/
OBLIVION BY SERGEI LEBEDEV
In one of the first 21st century Russian novels to probe the legacy of the Soviet prison camp system, a young man travels to the vast wastelands of the Far North to uncover the truth about a shadowy neighbor who saved his life, and whom he knows only as Grandfather II. Emerging from today’s Russia, where the ills of the past are being forcefully erased from public memory, this masterful novel represents an epic literary attempt to rescue history from the brink of oblivion.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/oblivion/
THE LAST WEYNFELDT BY MARTIN SUTER
Adrian Weynfeldt is an art expert in an international auction house, a bachelor in his mid-fifties living in a grand Zurich apartment filled with costly paintings and antiques. Always correct and well-mannered, he’s given up on love until one night—entirely out of character for him—Weynfeldt decides to take home a ravishing but unaccount
able young woman and gets embroiled in an art forgery scheme that threatens his buttoned up existence. This refined page-turner moves behind elegant bourgeois facades into darker recesses of the heart.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-last-weynfeldt/
THE LAST SUPPER BY KLAUS WIVEL
Alarmed by the oppression of 7.5 million Christians in the Middle East, journalist Klaus Wivel traveled to Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and the Palestinian territories to learn about their fate. He found a minority under threat of death and humiliation, desperate in the face of rising Islamic extremism and without hope their situation will improve. An unsettling account of a severely beleaguered religious group living, so it seems, on borrowed time. Wivel asks, Why have we not done more to protect these people?
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-last-supper/
GUYS LIKE ME BY DOMINIQUE FABRE
Dominique Fabre, born in Paris and a lifelong resident of the city, exposes the shadowy, anonymous lives of many who inhabit the French capital. In this quiet, subdued tale, a middle-aged office worker, divorced and alienated from his only son, meets up with two childhood friends who are similarly adrift. He’s looking for a second act to his mournful life, seeking the harbor of love and a true connection with his son. Set in palpably real Paris streets that feel miles away from the City of Light, a stirring novel of regret and absence, yet not without a glimmer of hope.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/guys-like/
ANIMAL INTERNET BY ALEXANDER PSCHERA
Some 50,000 creatures around the globe—including whales, leopards, flamingoes, bats and snails—are being equipped with digital tracking devices. The data gathered and studied by major scientific institutes about their behavior will warn us about tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, but also radically transform our relationship to the natural world. Contrary to pessimistic fears, author Alexander Pschera sees the Internet as creating a historic opportunity for a new dialogue between man and nature.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/animal-internet/
KILLING AUNTIE BY ANDRZEJ BURSA
A young university student named Jurek, with no particular ambitions or talents, finds himself with nothing to do. After his doting aunt asks the young man to perform a small chore, he decides to kill her for no good reason other than, perhaps, boredom. This short comedic masterpiece combines elements of Dostoevsky, Sartre, Kafka, and Heller, coming together to produce an unforgettable tale of murder and—just maybe—redemption.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/killing-auntie/
I CALLED HIM NECKTIE BY MILENA MICHIKO FLAŠAR
Twenty-year-old Taguchi Hiro has spent the last two years of his life living as a hikikomori—a shut-in who never leaves his room and has no human interaction—in his parents’ home in Tokyo. As Hiro tentatively decides to reenter the world, he spends his days observing life from a park bench. Gradually he makes friends with Ohara Tetsu, a salaryman who has lost his job. The two discover in their sadness a common bond. This beautiful novel is moving, unforgettable, and full of surprises.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/called-necktie/
WHO IS MARTHA? BY MARJANA GAPONENKO
In this rollicking novel, 96-year-old ornithologist Luka Levadski foregoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and savoring music in a gilded concert hall. Levadski was born in 1914, the same year that Martha—the last of the now-extinct passenger pigeons—died. Levadski himself has an acute sense of being the last of a species. This gloriously written tale mixes piquant wit with lofty musings about life, friendship, aging and death.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/martha/
New Vessel Press
To purchase these books and for a full listing of New Vessel Press titles, visit our website at www.newvesselpress.com
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