my cylindrical life

My autobiography will bear another title than this one. Nevertheless I really like the cylindrical shape, I found it magical, just like the shape of a square, or the shape of an egg.

Ma vie cylindrique (t/n My cylindrical life) is the first novel that I know of that has ever been translated from French into French!

From the original novel La Métaphysique des tubes (t/n The Character of Rain) published by Editions Albin Michel in 2000, I created a new original version a kind of duplicate, a clone, a twin. The story remains the same, but all the words are different.

This translation-work into the same language kept me up for 5 months (plus a month taken for proof-reading before the final draft).

And it took as much time to publish the book, self-published.

Official release date: May 28, 2024.

It's about a little Belgian girl who lives in Japan. There, children are considered like gods until they are 3, which corresponds to the way the girl sees herself. The characters living with her spice up her everyday divine life. Her brother keeps on tormenting her, but hopefully her perfect sister acts as a counterbalance; Kashima-san, the new housekeeper is actually a witch in a lovely Japanese lady disguise. And little Amélie would have never made it alive, when she almost died for the third time, without the intervention of Nishio-san, her beloved nanny. For her third birthday, her parents gifted her the worst present: carps.

This edition isn't a bilingual one. However, to help with the comparison between both texts, I used the same page layout as the Livre de Poche edition of La Métaphysique des tubes.

I always enjoyed playing with words. When the first confinement took place, I had to find a project that was compatible with my two – still young – daughters. I then had the idea of a translation within the same language. I chose five books from my own library, short (because I knew it would be a long process) autobiographies (one of my favourite categories).

This way, I translated the first twenty pages of Sophie Calle's Histoires Vraies (t/nTrue Stories), Annie Ernaux's La Place, Grégoire Bouillier's Rapport sur moi (t/n Report on myself), Edouard Levé's Autoportrait and the fifth one, that you know of. I worked on 5 books in order to increase the chances for one author to accept the project.

Annie Ernaux and Gérard Bouillier categorically refused, Sophie Calle had health issues, Edouard Levé's right-holders were not interested and Amélie Nothomb immediately accepted (it made me so happy).

I guess Amélie Nothomb's fans could enjoy my book (if they don't hate it), and also Oulipians, or people who like literary games, people who like intense (and funny) stories may also enjoy it as well as people who have never read a French to French translation.

This Métaphysique des tubes' adaptation was authorised by Amélie Nothomb and the Editions Albin Michel.

My cylindrical life is printed and distributed by BoD, Books on Demand. It will be available in all the official catalogues, on the shelves of several bookshops and to order everywhere !