Hortense in Exile

Set to marry Gormanskoï, the Premier Prince Presumptive, our beautiful heroine Hortense has been exiled to Queneau'stown, where she finds herself in a real-life production of Hamlet—or is it Hatmel, the original Poldevian tale scandalously plagiarized by that Englishman William Shahkayspear? Something is definitely amiss in the Poldevian Principalities, and if her loyal friends can't rescue her or foil the plagiarized plots of her evil twin, she may require intervention from the Author and Publisher—those unlikely cohorts responsible for bringing this deftly satiric, madcap adventure to light.

Brimming with literary allusions, philosophical conundrums, witty interjections, and (of course) cats, Hortense in Exile is the third installment in the altogether delightful and hilarious "Hortense Series" by French novelist and mathematician Jacques Roubaud.

Combining high literary sentiments with mathematical games, brilliant wordplay and an effusive sense of humor, Roubaud's works are some of the most enjoyable in all of contemporary literature, and he is considered to be one of the most accomplished members of Oulipo (the workshop for experimental literature founded by Raymond Queneau and including such figures as Georges Perec, Harry Mathews, and Italo Calvino).

Jacques Roubaud, born in 1932, has been a professor of mathematics at the University of Paris X Nanterre and is one of the most accomplished members of the Oulipo, the workshop for experimental literature founded by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. He is the author of numerous books of prose, theatre, and poetry. Most notably, Dalkey Archive Press published two of his Hortense novels—Hortense Is Abducted and Hortense in Exile—his poetry collections Some Thing Black and Plurality of Worlds of Lewis, and his novel The Princess Hoppy, or The Tale of Labrador.