Press
Shortlisted for the French-American Foundation and Florence Gould Foundation Translation Prize and for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize.
“[A] wonderful coffee-table book for Modern Strangers. This is a perfect one-a-day antidote for reality in all its clunky, gory glory.” —Rick Kleffel, The Agony Column
“In a lovely pocket-sized (hurrah!) edition from Wakefield Press, this is a wonderful volume to dip back into even if one first reads it through in one go; the pieces are well worth revisiting. The collages by Claude Ballaré also strike the proper note.” —M. A. Orthofer, The Complete Review
“I opened The Conductor and Other Tales, by Jean Ferry, and found myself, to use one of those no-no words among serious reviewers, enchanted. In tone and subject matter, these two dozen very short stories may remind you of Italo Calvino or Steven Millhauser at their most beguiling.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
“For fans of quirky, bleak, and short French fiction from the post-surrealist era, this book is a new must have.” —Josh Coblentz, HTML Giant
“[A] surreal literary dream.” —World Literature Today
“[I]t’s a beautiful, compact book, and slipping in and out of each tale is a delight, even if the stories explore some of the darker areas of our mind.” —Trevor Berrett, The Mookse and the Gripes
“These 25 stories have transient, wandering elements in which characters inhabit a place somewhere between fact and fiction, history and illusion, dream and reality of an eerie murkiness.” —Matt Pincus, Necessary Fiction
“Ferry’s surreal, sliver-short stories are certainly wistful explorations of loss, as André Breton wrote; however, they are also absolutely incendiary in their delivery and emotional impact.” —Leif Schenstead-Harris, Weird Fiction Review
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