ETRETAT, NORMANDY. On the balcony of a hotel room, a man is keeping watch. His gaze is fixed on the cliffs from which his mother jumped to her death twenty years earlier. During the course of a single night, the narrator reflects on his life, searching for traces of his mother, his childhood, his lost youth, his brutal father, his runaway brother and his years in Paris. He reflects on his memories, sensations and loss-and, above all, the love that has saved his own soul from despair.
OLIVIER ADAM was born in 1974. He lives near Saint-Malo in Brittany, having grown up in the Parisian suburbs. His novel
Passer l’Hiver won the Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle in 2004, and his novels
Poids Léger and
Je Vais Bien Ne t’en Fais Pas have been adapted for the cinema. The author is also a successful screenwriter and has published several books for children.
TRANSLATED from the French by Sue Rose
Cover Illustration Beatrice Caracciolo
ISBN (10) 1 901285 75 8
ISBN (13) 978 1 901285 71 0
“This very beautiful novel by Olivier Adam resembles a pebble from the coast of Normandy, polished and pure, and yet troubled by a raging sea.”
JEROME GARCIN -
Le Nouvel Observateur
“Haunting and intense, Cliffs is full of the terrifying loneliness of childhood. Olivier Adam has written a book of stark beauty, troubling in its depiction of loss and longing.”
TASH AW - writer
