Prehistoric Times Translator Alyson Waters Presents Readings, 9/27 & 10/8

Upcoming readings have been announced for Alyson Waters, translator of Prehistoric Times.

TONIGHT, September 27, 6:30 pm
McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince Street
New York, NY
Join Archipelago Books and McNally Jackson Books for a reading of Eric Chevillard's Prehistoric Times, followed by a Q&A with translators Alyson Waters and Tess Lewis.

Monday, October 8, 7:30 pm
La Maison Française
New York University
16 Washington Mews
New York, NY
Translators Translating: A Conversation. NYU's La Maison Française hosts Alyson Waters and Emmanuelle Ertel with special guest Rick Moody. Readings in English and French

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 path we've been traveling, and where we might be going-or not.

Eric Chevillard is one of the most inventive authors writing in French today. His novels include On the Ceiling, The Crab Nebula, and Demolishing Nisard, all translated by Jordan Stump, and Palafox (Archipelago), translated by Wyatt Mason.

Alyson Waters' translations include Albert Cossery's A Splendid Conspiracy and The Colors of Infamy, Vassilis Alexakis's Foreign Words, René Belletto's Coda, and-with Donald Nicholson-Smith-Yasmina Khadra's Cousin K. She was named a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, and lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Yale University and New York University.

Tess Lewis translates from French and German. Her translations include works by Peter Handke, Alois Hotschnig, Julya Rabinowich, Lukas Bärfuss, Philippe Jaccottet, Pascal Bruckner, and Jean-Luc Benoziglio among others. She has been awarded a PEN Translation Fund grant and an NEA Translation Fellowship. She also serves as an Advisory Editor for The Hudson Review and writes essays on European Literature for various literary journals and newspapers.

Emmanuelle Ertel is a professor of French at New York University and a literary translator. Her translations of American novels into French include Louis Begley's The Man Who Was Late and As Max Saw It, Rick Moody's The Black Veil, and Tom Perrotta's Little Children.

Rick Moody is the author of numerous novels, collections of short fiction, and a memoir. His debut novel, Garden State (1992), was the winner of the 1991 Editor's Choice Award from the Pushcart Press. His novel The Ice Storm (1994) released by Fox Searchlight as a film directed by Ang Lee in 1997. Other novels include The Four Fingers of Death, The Diviners, and Purple America. Right Livelihoods, a book of three novellas, was published in 2007.