The Last Train
Arnaud Rykner
Translated by Sue Boswell
In July, 1944, one of the last convoys of deportees took three days, in blazing heat, to go from Compiègne to Dachau. More than 2,000 men were crowded into 22 cars, and more than 500 would die on the journey.
Arnaud Rykner’s The Last Train, winner of the Jean d’Heurs prize for historical fiction upon its initial release in France, and which is here beautifully translated into English for the first time by Sue Boswell, is based on this historical fact, which was experienced by a member of his family. This short novel, presented as a monologue of the protagonist as he nears his 22nd birthday, is at once a chronicle of a true hell, and a compelling meditation on survival.
About the Author
Arnaud Rykner is a writer and academic. He has published eight novels, several of which have appeared in paperback including Le Wagon which won the Jean d’Heurs prize for historical fiction in 2011; he has also published two plays. In 2019 he was awarded a residency at Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto, a cultural centre run by the Institut Français, where he began work on his next novel. He is a Professor and Director of Research at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, and has also authored a dozen essays and edited many collected works. He was responsible for the critical edition of the theatrical works of Nathalie Sarraute in the prestigious Pléiade series, as well as those of various other modern authors (such as Marguerite Duras) or older works (Marivaux, Maeterlinck), in paperback collections. As a theatrical producer he has notably put on the works of Nathalie Sarraute, Maurice Maeterlinck and Bernard-Marie Koltès. He is a Visiting Professor at Rutgers University (NJ) and a Senior Research Fellow of the University of Durham (UK).
Other books by Arnaud Rykner: I Will Not Come, (Snuggly Books, 2022).
About the Translator
Sue Boswell studied French Language and Literature at UCL and for a time taught French at Goldsmiths University of London. She then moved into university administration, specialising in university external relations and communications. Later she became a translator for the Wiener Holocaust Library, where she met Arnaud Rykner when he came to give a talk on his novel Le Wagon, now translated by her into English as The Last Train. Sue lives with her husband, Colin Boswell, in London and Ouveillan, a village near Narbonne in the Languedoc.
Paperback, 144 pages
1st edition, October 20, 2020
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-037-1
USA: $15.00