The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild

Mathias Enard, Frank Wynne

• Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
• Year: 2023
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781804270608
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

To research his thesis on contemporary agrarian life, anthropology student David Mazon moves from Paris to La Pierre-Saint-Christophe, a village in the marshlands of western France. Determined to capture the essence of rurality, the intrepid scholar shuttles around on his moped to interview local residents. Unbeknownst to David, in these nondescript lands, once theatres of wars and revolutions, Death leads the dance. When an existence ends, the Wheel of Life recycles its soul and hurls it back into the world as microbe, human or wild animal, sometimes in the past, sometimes in the future. Only once a year do Death and the living observe a temporary truce, during a gargantuan three-day feast where gravediggers gorge themselves on food, libations and language. Brimming with Mathias Enard's characteristic wit and encyclopaedic brilliance,  The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild is a riotous novel where the edges between past and present are constantly dissolving against a Rabelaisian backdrop of excess – and a paradoxically macabre paean to life's richness.

Table of contents

• PRAISE
• TITLE PAGE
• MAP
• CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• EPIGRAPH
• I. THE SAVAGE MIND
• SONG: ON THE STEPS OF THE PALACE
• II. THE HANGED MAN’S TOE
• SONG: A GALLANT SEAMAN COMES HOME FROM WAR
• III. AND WE SHALL PLAY A GAME OF CARDS...
• SONG: IN THE PRISONS OF NANTES
• IV. THE ANNUAL BANQUET OF THE GRAVEDIGGERS’ GUILD
• SONG: THE LAMENT OF SAINT NICHOLAS
• V. GALLIA EST OMNIS DIVISA IN PARTES TRES
• SONG: À LA CLAIRE FONTAINE
• VI. PÉLAGIE READS THE FUTURE ON THE BARK OF CHERRY TREES
• SONG: LITTLE JOHNNY DANCES, LITTLE JOHNNY DANCES
• VII. THE LOVERS OF VERONA
• CLARIFICATIONS
• TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• COPYRIGHT