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Solo Viola

A Post-Exotic Novel
Series: Univocal
4.01 goodreads logo

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( 150 ratings, 40 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
In Solo Viola by Antoine Volodine, readers are led into a dystopian world where an oppressive regime reigns over society. The book explores themes of resistance and survival through the eyes of its protagonist, a musician who uses art as a form of rebellion. Through a blend of surrealism and narrative depth, the story captures the struggle against a harsh, dehumanising system.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book may appeal to you if you're intrigued by dystopian settings and enjoy narratives that weave elements of surrealism and philosophical pondering. It's an atmospheric and thought-provoking journey that blends the lines between reality and dream-like visions, offering a unique experience in literary fiction.

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"In one of his first forays into post-exoticism, Antoine Volodine takes the reader into a fictional world where a variety of characters collide"--

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

A harrowing early novel by one of France's most unusual contemporary writers

At once humorous and horrifying, Solo Viola is one of Antoine Volodine's first forays into post-exoticism. He takes the reader into a fictional world where a variety of characters collide: three prisoners just released from jail, a band of circus performers, a string quartet, a writer, and a bird.

All are trying to survive in an absurd and hostile environment of authoritarian spectacle, at the mercy of a tyrannical buffoon, and seeking the strange counterbalance of hope in a viola player, whose stunning music just might save them all, if only for a moment.

Series: Univocal

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  • Solo Viola
    A harrowing early novel by one of France's most unusual contemporary writers At once humorous and horrifying, Solo Viola is one of Antoine Volodine's first forays into post-exoticism. He takes the reader into a fictional world where a variety of characters collide: three prisoners just released from jail, a band of circus performers, a string quartet, a writer, and a...
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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Solo Viola by Antoine Volodine is praised for its compelling examination of fascism through a fantastical lens, offering a powerful commentary relevant to contemporary issues. The book is described as haunting and elegiac, blending whimsy with earnest reflections on political danger. Critics appreciate its unique vision of performers and prisoners under an authoritarian regime, noting the work's political and fantastical intertwining. The novel is recognised for its smooth translation and as a part of Volodine's broader post-exotic literary project.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781517911195

Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 11 May 2021

Country: United States

Imprint: University of Minnesota Press

Contributors:

  • Translated by Lia Swope Mitchell

Audience: General / adult, Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 25.0mm

Width: 137.0mm

Height: 203.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 112

About the Author

Antoine Volodine has written more than forty novels, using various heteronyms in his ongoing post-exoticism project. Other works in translation include Radiant Terminus, We Monks and Soldiers by Lutz Bassman, and In the Time of the Blue Ball by Manuela Drager.

Lia Swope Mitchell holds a PhD in French from the University of Minnesota. Her translations include Survival of the Fireflies by Georges Didi-Huberman (Minnesota, 2018).

Lionel Ruffel teaches comparative literature and creation litteraire at Universite Paris 8 (Vincennes-Saint-Denis). His most recent works include Brouhaha: Worlds of the Contemporary (Univocal/Minnesota, 2017).

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