Fibrils

The third volume of Michel Leiriss renowned autobiography, now available in English for the first time in a brilliant translation by Lydia Davis A beloved and versatile author and ethnographer, French intellectual Michel Leiris is often ranked in the company of Proust, Gide, Sartre, and Camus, yet his work remains largely unfamiliar to English-language readers. This brilliant translation of Fibrils (first published as Fibrilles in 1966), the third volume of Leiriss memoir The Rules of the Game, invites us to discover why Lvi-Strauss proclaimed Leiris incontestably one of the greatest writers of the century. Leiriss monumental autobiography, a thirty-five-year project, is a primary document of the examined life in the twentieth century. In Fibrils, Leiris reconciles literary commitment with social/political engagement. He recounts extensive travel and anthropological work, including a 1955 visit to Maos China, along with the mundane: his walk to work, his visits to spas and galleries, his goals as a writer. He also details his suicidal descent into Hell, when the guilt over an extramarital affair becomes unbearable and he overdoses on barbiturates. A ruthless self-examiner, Leiris seeks to invent a new way of remembering, probe the mechanisms of memory, and explore the way a life can be told.