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Maylis De Kerangal Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Maylis De Kerangal
Photo Credit: (c) Emmanuelle Marchadour

Maylis De Kerangal

How to pronounce Maylis De Kerangal: my-LEECE dee CARE-en-gal (second part of the first name rhymes with "fleece")

Maylis De Kerangal Biography

Maylis de Kerangal is the award winning and critically acclaimed author of several books, including Naissance d'un pont (Birth of a Bridge), winner of the Prix Franz Hessel and Prix Médicis; Réparer les vivants, which won the Grand Prix RTL-Lire and whose English translation, The Heart, was one of the Wall Street Journal's Ten Best Fiction Works of 2016 and the winner of the 2017 Wellcome Book Prize; and Un chemin de tables, whose English translation, The Cook, was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Mend the Living was Longlisted for the Booker International Prize 2016.



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Interview

Clémence Sfadj with Publishers Weekly interviews the author about her short story collection, Canoes

Canoes are one of many motifs that appear in all of these stories. What inspired this decision?

Canoes can contain narrative. It's a nod to Ursula K. Le Guin's "carrier bag" of fiction. I see the canoe as a basket going through each part of my imagination and memories, collecting the stories. And they were a means of communication for the First Nations in North America, who used them to go from village to village. It's quite a magical object with a totemic poetic notion.

A character in "Nevermore" hires the narrator to read a poem and instructs her to "climb inside the text as you would through a half-open window." Did you have this image in mind when writing these stories?

I wrote each story thinking about the others. They are all connected. For me, it's a novel cut in different fragments rather than a collection. I call it a "novel in detached pieces." And there are women's voices in all these stories: the parts speak to each other.

Strong voices are central to Canoes. Tell us more about where these voices come from.

The voice of the text is an enigmatic thing, and it's very important to me. When we're reading, we hear a voice, and it's not the author's or our own. We hear another voice. Voices can tell of what we...

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Books by this Author

Books by Maylis De Kerangal at BookBrowse
Canoes jacket Eastbound jacket The Heart jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Maylis De Kerangal but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Tessa Hadley

    Tessa Hadley

    Tessa Hadley is the author of three previous collections of stories and eight novels. She was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction, the Hawthornden Prize, and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and has been a finalist ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Canoes

    Try:
    After the Funeral and Other Stories
    by Tessa Hadley

  • Claire Keegan

    Claire Keegan

    Claire Keegan was raised on a farm in Ireland. Her stories have won numerous awards and are translated into thirty languages. Antarctica won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Canoes

    Try:
    So Late in the Day
    by Claire Keegan

We recommend 3 similar authors

View all 3 Read-Alikes

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