Hermits United

This book gives us glimpses of literary Paris before and during the First World War. We have a guided tour of Auteuil, where Apollinaire spent his saddest days. We meet Monsieur Lehec the bookseller, who loved his books so much that 'he could bring himself to sell them only to the few he deemed worthy of acquiring them' and Liseux the publisher, who, when asked his political views, replied: 'I am a republican, but of the republic of letters.'The Flaneur of Paris was published in the year of Apollinaire's death. More than a century later, it makes its debut in English, elegantly translated by Alex Andriesse. From the Cafe Napo to Ernest La Jeunesse's room, from an obscure Napoleonic museum to Monsieur Vollard's cellar, The Flaneur of Paris is a fragmented song, inviting us to walk down to the Seine. Alex Andriesse is a poet and has translated, notably, Chateaubriand's Memoirs from Beyond the Grave (NYRB Classics), Cristina Campo's The Unforgivable (NYRB Classics), and Jacques Dupin's Notched (Hermits United).

'That was yesterday / Those were my hands / That was yesterday / When the future came...' Yves Nedonsel - born in Normandy in 1947 - was a poet of time and out of keeping with his time. His first book, Remugles, was published in 1974. He then fell silent for decades, turning his attention to the study of transhumance paths and the cultivation of a vineyard in his adopted home of Provence. Yet he continued to revise his poems and compose new ones, creating a body of work remarkable for its intensity, its feverish rhythms, and its grim humour. In 'Autopsy of a Week', 'Summerhill', and 'In Quarantine', the speaker rails against the cant of the contemporary world, yet the language is electrified by the stuff of this world: 'the future is shrink-wrapped', and 'the cheapjack shines / mesmerising to memorise...' By turns profane and profound, Nedonsel's poems give voice, as he himself writes, to 'a voiceless cry torn to shreds by writing'. Appeasements is the first selection of Nedonsel's poems to appear in English. The book also includes a translator's note about the poet and the poetry, as well as several of Nedonsel's letters. Alex Andriesse has translated into English works by Chateaubriand, Paul Lafargue, Cristina Campo, Roberto Bazlen and Jacques Dupin, amongst others. He is an associate editor at New York Review Books.

Hours. Landscapes. Seasons. Life. A musical meditation in poetic prose. 'At any given moment in time', writes Quignard, 'a work receives its sudden audition. Bach and Mendelssohn. Froberger in Bach. A bird in Messiaen.'Like Bach, Quignard is anachronistic. In his remarkable body of work, the accomplished musician and writer, who once began writing a thesis on the language of Bergson, probes incessantly the mystery of time. Happy the Hours is the epitome of this probing, a perpetual beginning. Pascal Quignard is laureate of the Grand Prix du roman de l'Academie francaise (2000), the Prix Goncourt (2002) and the Prix Formentor (2023), amongst many other prestigious awards. Happy the Hours (Les Heures Heureuses, Albin Michel, 2023) is the twelfth in his Last Kingdom series.

'There was a time when we would toss peanuts to the baby monkeys in the Vincennes Zoo. It was party time. It was not forbidden to feed wild animals. We hardly had any props to dress the stage. The comings and goings of the pawnbroker were easy to follow. He who lived not in those times, knows not the true pleasures of life.'Party Time is translated from Un temps de fete (La Table Ronde, 2024). Guillaume Decourt is a double laureate of the Prix Max-Jacob and the Prix Lucette-Moreau de l'academie francaise. Spencer Matheson is a Canadian poet living in Paris.

What has Confucius to do with a transatlantic quarrel and a post-truth epoch? As the Chinese past becomes the academic expression of a clash between superpowers, and as the question of Confucius's realness, or not, echoes a rather ludicrous Sino-American rivalry for pseudo world hegemony, Jean Levi regards, with a clinical and wry eye, current academia as an ideological battle site and an image of our time. The Assassins of Confucius was published by Hermits United in 2023. This 2025 edition includes a postscript, where the renowned sinologist tells of a recent archaeological discovery, one that makes certain the validity of his 2023 argument.

Visiting Normandy in October 2018, on a whim David Hockney decided to settle in Pays d'Auge. Confined to his house during the 2020 lockdown, on canvas, paper, and iPad, he dialogued with the trees in his garden, the moon, and the rain. Hockney's life and work during this time have been portrayed by his friend and neighbour, the gallerist Jean Fremon. Thanks to this portrait of an artist, we witness the Arrival of Spring. This book is translated from David Hockney en Pays d'Auge (L'Echoppe, 2020).

'Fruit cocktails that do not arrive; rickshaws with no passengers; […] the absent body of the crucified from the Isenheim Altarpiece in David Hockney’s painting; a trip, an insomnia; a country where time is different…'In this dreamlike novella, in the bewitching melancholy of nocturnal India, an art dealer pursues the goddess of the void. La Deesse du vide was first published in Rue du Regard (P.O.L editeur, 2012). The present publication is a bilingual edition, comprising a new translation in English and a revised version in French.