Collection: Jean Echenoz

Jean Echenoz, the novel in motion

Je m’en vais, winner of the 1999 Prix Goncourt, sends an art dealer to retrieve a cargo of ancient objects from the ice of the Far North. All of Echenoz can be found in this premise: a popular genre—here, the adventure novel—approached from a distance with deadpan humor. He has treated the detective novel in the same way with Cherokee, espionage with Lac, exoticism with L’Équipée malaise, and the pursuit novel with Les Grandes Blondes. Then came three fictionalized biographies: those of Ravel, the runner Emil Zátopek in Courir(2008), and an inventor inspired by Nikola Tesla in Des éclairs(2010), before 14, a novel about the Great War, and the intrigues of Envoyée spécialeor Vie de Gérard Fulmard.

The man is more discreet than his books. Born in Orange in 1947, he studied sociology before publishing Le Méridien de Greenwich(1979) with Jérôme Lindon. Cherokeereceived the Prix Médicis in 1983; Minuit would remain his only publisher until Bristolin 2025, the year he was awarded the Prix de la Langue française.

For a body of work still in progress, straddling the literature of the 21st century, the condition matters as much as the title. Under their white covers with blue trim, first editions from Minuit are often kept uncut, from 20th-century first editionsto 21st-century first editions; the numbered copies on fine paper, with Je m’en vaisin the lead, are now traded as rare books.

In our hands

Echenoz’s titles line up on the light wood shelves of the Librairie KOEGUI, which does not hesitate to treat the great authors of the 21st century with the same respect as their predecessors from previous centuries.