Overview
"Indisputably one of the most invigorating French writers."—John Taylor, Paths to Contemporary French Literature Jacques Réda chooses the height of the plum-picking season to revisit – on an old motorbike – his home town in Lorraine, north-eastern France. The fragrant allure of mirabelles introduces a colourful mix of old acquaintances renewed in these five days and vividly remembered places that have shaped a lifetime's writing. With its reflections, often whimsical, on the passing of the years, and its varied motifs – the plums, the provincial stillness, the toy soldiers of his childhood, 'the astonishing existence of others' first discovered as a love-struck schoolboy – this has few rivals as a portrayal of town life in la France profonde, written with tenderness and humour. Reviews
"Indisputably one of the most invigorating French writers."—John Taylor, Paths to Contemporary French LiteratureAuthor Biography
Jacques Réda, born in Lunéville in 1929, was awarded the French Academy's Grand Prix in 1993 for a lifetime's work, and in 1999 the Bourse Goncourt de la Poésie. He was editor of the Nouvelle Revue Française from 1987 to 1995. Treading Lightly: Selected Poems 1961-1975 translated by Jennie Feldman was published in 2005. He lives in Paris. Jennie Feldman studied French at Oxford. Her poetry collections The Lost Notebook and Swift are published by Anvil, as is the anthology Into the Deep Street: Seven Modern French Poets 1938-2008, co-authored with Stephen Romer and shortlisted for the 2011 Popescu Prize. She lives in Jerusalem and Oxford. 
