Hedi Kaddour - Waltenberg

‘We’ll listen to what Walker tells the youngsters we send him, and you can tell Walker all about Waltenberg, we need him, he’s not a happy man, we must also find a few sound brains in Russia, Spain, a likely bunch of young friends, and a girl who’s studying singing, I absolutely insist we have a girl who’s studying singing.

‘We’re going to disappear, Misha, nowadays our eyes water more when we wake up of a morning, no, I’m not mad, let’s not be late, the big game, the third shore!

‘And even if I was mad, let’s not forget the most urgent task, saving your skin, today Kohl’s star is highest in the firmament, an enlarged Germany in the centre of Europe, with lots of money to buy territory with, Maisie doesn’t like it at all, you wouldn’t have something on Herr Kohl, would you?’

Hédi Kaddour has been teaching French literature at the Ecole Normale Supérieure since 1984. He is the author of three collections of poetry and of several translations (from German, English and Arabic). Waltenberg is his first novel.

David Coward has translated a dozen French classic texts from Molière to the Marquis de Sade and Maupassant and for Albert Cohen’s Belle du Seigneur was awarded the Scott-Moncrieff Prize for translation in 1996. He has written widely on French history and culture, his most recent book being A History of French Literature (2002). He is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books and the literary pages of newspapers and periodicals.