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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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ARBRE DE L'OUBLI

Nancy Huston

TREE OF FORGETFULNESS

ARBRE DE L'OUBLI/TREE OF FORGETFULNESS draws the portrait of a wealthy, privileged, well-educated American family, slowly broadening the intimate picture to reveal the unexpected threads that connect these people's lives to some of the darkest pages of modern History.
Joel Rabenstein, born in the Bronx in 1940 to Jewish parents who had fled the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia, grows up to become a brilliant anthropologist and a professor at Columbia University.
Lili Rose Darrington, born in Nashua, New Hampshire in 1955, educated at Smith College and in Paris, grows up to become an admired feminist scholar and professor at CCNY.
Their daughter Shayna Darrington-Rabenstein, born in 1992, grows up to go berserk. The book is punctuated by capitalized passages from her notebook, from which we gather that she is utterly enraged at and alienated from her parents.

Starting with the end - Shayna's arrival in Burkina Faso with her Haitian lover in January 2016 - and using Shayna's rage as its focal point, the story gradually reveals to us the missing piece of the puzzle: Selma Parker, an African-American woman from Baltimore, whom the couple paid to receive Joel's sperm, carry and give birth to their child.

Born in Calgary, Canada, Nancy Huston settled in Paris in 1973. She is the author of various essays, plays and novels among which Fault Lines (Prix Fémina 2006, shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize), Dolce Agonia, Prodigy, The Mark of the Angel, Instruments of Darkness.
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Published 2021-03-03 by Actes Sud

Comments

A great novelist... You have to rush to the bookstore to buy and read Tree of Forgetfulness.

Each character in Tree of Forgetfulness is the incarnation of a piece of the history of the world. Nancy Huston gives free speech to all, at the risk of shocking, at the risk of controversy, to draw tormented men and women. They must learn to deal with what they are in order to understand themselves, then they must learn to let go of what they are in order to understand others. Nancy Huston here explores ideological earthquakes. She listens to inner lives and reproduces the sounds of the world.

Tree of Forgetfulness juggles with eras, embraces the history of a century, deals with racism, feminism, motherhood. It takes virtuosity to succeed in such a novel.

Nancy Huston was the guest of « 64' » on TV5 MONDE Read more...

French Canadian: Lémeac ; Spanish: Galaxia Gutenberg, Catalan: L'Altra Editoriale; Russian: Text

Such virtuosity... Between the blades of the dramas that define these characters and their ancestors, the light pierces. The lights. We turn the pages as we would handle a kaleidoscope. Nancy Huston takes us far beyond the black and white that haunts the book. It intersects places and ages, clashes between generations.

With this sprawling work, the writer portrays a touching humanity, whose beauty lies in the constant doubt that animates her and in her tireless quest for meaning.

NANCY HUSTON was the gest of 28 MINUTES SAMEDI on ARTE. Read more...

With this sprawling work, the writer portrays a touching humanity, whose beauty resides in the permanent doubt that animates her and in her tireless quest for meaning.

Nancy Huston was the guest at la Maison de la Poésie, the one-hour talk can be seen here Read more...

In this book infinitely rich and strong in torments, love is the only lull and Nancy Huston knows the sumptuous words to say it. Splendid.

Tree of oblivion retraces the darkest pages of history while addressing the essential issues of our contemporary society.

As powerful as Fault Lines... A book in touch with the violence of the time, feminism, gender, racism. It's a very, very beautiful book.