Music, life, literature, and Jean-Claude Izzo...from the Guardian Unlimited Blog
Jean-Claude Izzo's novels make brilliant use of musical allusions in portraying France's ethnic divisions
About a third of the way through Lost Sailors, the most recent English-language translation of the late Jean-Claude Izzo's gritty crime fiction, I felt as if I couldn't go on reading without hearing a Duke Ellington album from the early 60s. At this point in the novel, Captain Abdul Aziz is stranded on a freighter in the derelict port of Marseilles with his life in disarray. Political turmoil in his native Lebanon has never made life easy, but his real problem is his inability to prioritise his family over life at sea, a life among pirates, prostitutes and sailors.
Read more >>
About a third of the way through Lost Sailors, the most recent English-language translation of the late Jean-Claude Izzo's gritty crime fiction, I felt as if I couldn't go on reading without hearing a Duke Ellington album from the early 60s. At this point in the novel, Captain Abdul Aziz is stranded on a freighter in the derelict port of Marseilles with his life in disarray. Political turmoil in his native Lebanon has never made life easy, but his real problem is his inability to prioritise his family over life at sea, a life among pirates, prostitutes and sailors.
Read more >>