Prehistoric Times

by Eric Chevillard

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

The narrator of Prehistoric Times might easily be taken for an inhabitant of Beckett’s world: a dreamer who in his savage and deductive folly tries to modify reality. The writing, with its burlesque variations, accelerations, and ruptures, takes us into a frightening and jubilant delirium, where the message is in the medium and digression gets straight to the point. In an entirely original voice, Eric Chevillard asks looming and luminous questions about who we are, the paths we’ve been traveling, and where we might be going – or not.

Release date: July 10, 2012

Publisher: Archipelago

Print pages: 131

Sample

Boborikine was not a big man, though not preposterously small, he must have stood, amounted to, or measured a head shorter than me, judging from his uniform, but this head, though shorter, was most definitely wider than mine, judging from his cap, and his limbs were shorter than my own, no doubt in proportion to his modest height, but too short for a man such as myself and consequently the sleeves of his jacket and the legs of his trousers are also too short, whereas with each step I take his shoes slip off my feet, first the left, then the right, then the left, from which I gather his feet were bigger than mine, perhaps even a bit too big for a man his size, just as his stomach was fatter, much fatter than mine because, really, I seem to be spy- ing on the world from behind my curtains in this gigantic jacket, peeping at the little world that surrounds me. Boborikine is dead. I am his replacement. His uniform does not suit me, not in the least. I asked for a new one, made to measure. To be more efficient, I argued, convinced that this argument was sound; to be stricter, prompter, adding: and to represent the profession with greater dignity. I’d even go so far as to believe that my request will be heard on high and satisfied at long last, after all the dillydallying by the administration.