{"title":"Pascal Quignard","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePascal Quignard\u003c\/strong\u003e weaves intricate narratives that traverse the boundaries between historical fiction and contemplative prose. His works invite readers into a realm where memory, art, and time intertwine, offering profound reflections on human experience through rich, lyrical storytelling.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom mysterious solidarities to evocative explorations of silence and loss, Quignard's novels and essays capture the delicate interplay of culture and history. Expect titles that challenge conventional genres, blending the poetic with the philosophical in a unique literary journey.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"dying-of-thinking-the-last-kingdom-ix-by-pascal-quignard-9781803092423","title":"Dying of Thinking – The Last Kingdom IX","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA deeply contemplative work devoted to thinking from one of the foremost literary figures of contemporary France.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eDying of Thinking\u003c\/em\u003e is the ninth volume of Pascal Quignard’s \u003cem\u003eLast Kingdom\u003c\/em\u003e series. It explores three themes: how thought and death coincide, how thought is close to melancholy, and how thought takes shelter near traumatism. One who thinks, Quignard shows us, \"compensates\" for a very ancient abandonment.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEven as a dream is a meaning whose disorderly, condensed, paradoxical images intuit something which has preceded sleep and which returns in them, thought is a meaning which uses words that are written, re-transcribed, dissected, etymologized and neologized. Throughout the \u003cem\u003eLast Kingdom\u003c\/em\u003e series, Quignard has sought to experience another way of thinking, one that has nothing to do with philosophy, a way of attaching himself “literally” to texts and of progressing by decomposing the imagery of dreams. \u003cem\u003eDying of Thinking\u003c\/em\u003e is the heart of this quest.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46853254119660,"sku":"9781803092423","price":47.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/27024323482829.jpg?v=1759193141"},{"product_id":"mysterious-solidarities-by-pascal-quignard-9780857427397","title":"Mysterious Solidarities","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen translator Claire Methuen travels back to her hometown of Dinard for a family wedding, she runs into her old piano teacher, Madame Ladon. After befriending the ageing woman, Methuen begins to toy with the idea of a permanent return to live in Brittany. She becomes increasingly obsessed by her childhood sweetheart, Simon Quelen, who, now married and a father, still lives in a village further down the coast where he is the local pharmacist and mayor.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHaving moved into a farmhouse, she soon spends her days walking the heathland above the cliffs and spying on him as he sails in the bay. As she walks, she is at one with the land of her childhood and youth, “her skull emptying into the landscape.” When her younger brother Paul comes to join her there, the web of solidarities is further enriched.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eMysterious Solidarities\u003c\/i\u003e is a tale of dramatic episodes, told through intermingling voices and the atmospherics of the austere Breton landscape. Ultimately, it is a story of obsessional love and of a parallel sibling bond that is equally strong.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46853277581548,"sku":"9780857427397","price":46.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/7199503482493.jpg?v=1759194695"},{"product_id":"the-fount-of-time-by-pascal-quignard-9780857428493","title":"The Fount of Time","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“\u003ci\u003eLast Kingdom\u003c\/i\u003e is a set of books that... is neither philosophical argumentation nor little disparate, scholarly essays, nor novelistic narrative; gradually, for me, all genres have fallen away.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSo writes Pascal Quignard of his monumental book series, \u003ci\u003eLast Kingdom\u003c\/i\u003e. In the latest volume, \u003ci\u003eThe Fount of Time\u003c\/i\u003e, he focuses on the paradoxically immediate presence in our lives of the deepest, most distant past. He explores this subject through a multitude of mediums: fragments of autobiography; curious folktales; literary snippets; historical anecdotes both classical and modern; ruminations on biology, archaeology, and linguistics. Using all of these forms, he confronts dimensions of human experience which, though customarily conveyed in legend, myth, and dreams, run somehow beneath the everyday world and yet are part of our most tangible reality.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTo enter Quignard’s horizonless time-space is to embrace a rich vision in which the totality of human history and culture is placed disconcertingly on a single footing. In \u003ci\u003eThe Fount of Time\u003c\/i\u003e we are able to glimpse—whether through obscure cultural detail or unusual anecdote—“another world beneath the world.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46853313593580,"sku":"9780857428493","price":46.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/7210463482493.jpg?v=1759196915"},{"product_id":"the-paradisiacs-by-pascal-quignard-9781803095554","title":"The Paradisiacs","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePascal Quignard delves into the uncanny bond between recognition and loss, outlining how our earliest experiences shape our longing for a paradise we can never reclaim.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhat if paradise was not a place we lost, but one we never truly knew? In \u003cem\u003eThe Paradisiacs\u003c\/em\u003e, the fourth volume of the \u003cem\u003eLast Kingdom\u003c\/em\u003e series, Pascal Quignard meditates on the nature of paradise—not as an Eden to which we might return, but as a place of origin that lingers in myth.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThrough his signature blend of ancient texts, Paleolithic art, psychoanalysis, and personal reflection, Quignard explores our primal longing for recognition. He traces this yearning back to the erstwhile, a prenatal paradise from which we are expelled at birth, and examines how resemblance and recognition shape our identities.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAt once poetic and philosophical, \u003cem\u003eThe Paradisiacs\u003c\/em\u003e invites readers into Quignard's singular world, where language and history coalesce into a profound rumination on the origins of selfhood. With John Taylor's masterly translation, this latest installment of \u003cem\u003eLast Kingdom\u003c\/em\u003e is a hypnotic and revelatory reading experience for those drawn to the intersections of philosophy and the ineffable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47031882449132,"sku":"9781803095554","price":47.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/27055633482829.jpg?v=1764151075"},{"product_id":"the-unsaddled-by-pascal-quignard-9781803091501","title":"The Unsaddled","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eA captivating and wide-ranging interpretation of accidental dismounting.\u003c\/b\u003e\n\nIn Pascal Quignard’s writing, philology hunts for wild game in a dark forest. \u003cem\u003eThe Unsaddled\u003c\/em\u003e, which features horses as its central figure, is no exception. Taking off from puns, multifarious imagery, and metaphorical meanings—“to be baffled,” “to be thrown”—that the book’s title provides, Quignard focuses on life-changing moments.\n\nWe meet George Sand (whose father died after being thrown from his horse), Saint Paul, Abelard, Agrippa d’Aubigné, and countless other writers, philosophers, theologians, or kings who fell off their horses—not to forget Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was knocked over by a dog. Being “unsaddled” can also be associated, as Quignard shows in regard to Nietzsche, with an “overturning” of values.\n\nScenes of war, hunting, “fleeing” or sexuality—“When lovers have a horse ride, they gallop in another world”—come before our eyes, each time from those unsettling vantage points that Quignard knows how to find. As ever, he ranges far and wide in his intense quest, taking examples from across human history, from the neolithic age to his own childhood memories of postwar Le Havre in northern France.\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47433086664940,"sku":"9781803091501","price":46.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781803091501.jpg?v=1774765611"},{"product_id":"the-tears-by-pascal-quignard-9781803090641","title":"The Tears","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA novel of intersecting historical threads.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Tears\u003c\/em\u003e is, at one level, a novel about the turbulent lives of twins, the sons of Charlemagne’s daughter Bertha. The studious and scholarly Nithard succeeds his father Angilbert as lay abbot of the Abbey of Saint Riquier in Normandy and accompanies his cousin, the emperor Charles the Bald, on his military campaigns. His twin brother Hartnid strikes out boldly for more exotic parts—including, eventually, Baghdad—in a seemingly deranged quest to track down the elusive female face that haunts his dreams.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eYet this novel of intersecting historical threads and patches of poetic reimagining is crisscrossed by a host of other themes: the enigmatic joys afforded by nature, the intimate relation between living creatures which literature has since earliest times depicted, and the mysterious power of contingent events that have shaped entire cultures—including the birth of the French language itself. This heady brew of medieval chronicle, miraculous folktale, and speculative reconstruction of history further strengthens Pascal Quignard’s status as one of France’s most imaginative contemporary writers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47461650071788,"sku":"9781803090641","price":46.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781803090641-the-tears.jpg?v=1774974233"},{"product_id":"the-roving-shadows-by-pascal-quignard-9781803093659","title":"The Roving Shadows","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA bold and adventurous work of literature that explores the relationship between reading, writing, sex, and death.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe first book in Pascal Quignard's Last Kingdom series, \u003cem\u003eThe Roving Shadows\u003c\/em\u003e can be read as a long meditation on reading and writing that strives to situate these otherwise innocuous activities in a profound relationship to sex and death. Writing and reading can, in fact, be linked to our animal natures and artistic strivings, to primal forces and culturally persistent fascinations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith dexterity and inventiveness, Quignard weaves together historical anecdotes, folktales from the East and West, fragments of myth, and speculative historical reconstructions. The whole, written in a musical style not far removed from that of Couperin, whose piano composition \u003cem\u003eLes Ombres errantes\u003c\/em\u003e lends the book its title, coheres into a work of literature that reverberates in the psyche long after one has laid it down.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Roving Shadows\u003c\/em\u003e is a rare and wondrous tour de force that cements Quignard's reputation in contemporary world literature. Available now in English, this boldly adventurous work will find a new and welcoming audience.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47464625963244,"sku":"9781803093659","price":35.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781803093659-the-roving-shadows.jpg?v=1775050189"},{"product_id":"the-silent-crossing-by-pascal-quignard-9781803093611","title":"The Silent Crossing","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA haunting homage to life and liberty, to society and solitude, and to the binding and unbinding that constitute the weft of our lives.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDrawing on materials from across many cultures, Pascal Quignard makes an effort to establish shared human values as the breeding ground for a modern Enlightenment. Considering atheism as a spiritual liberation, suicide as a free act, and the rejection of society as a free choice, the author explores philosophical themes that have run through human civilizations—most often as heresies—from our earliest days.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn his search for freedom, Quignard questions the binding dependency of religion, querying how, in a world where all forms of society presuppose that someone (or some collective) is looking over our shoulders, we can be free. These reflections, he implies, are the essential spiritual exercise for our times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFew voices in contemporary French literature are more distinct than that of Quignard. By reading this fragmentary, episodic assemblage of intimate experiences and borrowed tales, we open up a space of liberty, creating for the reader space for meditation and, perhaps, liberation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Silent Crossing\u003c\/em\u003e encourages readers to ponder these themes deeply, embracing the philosophical journey the book embarks upon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47471828926700,"sku":"9781803093611","price":35.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/6ef39e9c787755fbbe6ab5d43d71e5fe.jpg?v=1775694135"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.live\/collections\/pascal-quignard.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}