Jardin des Plantes: A Novel

Winner of the 2001 French-American Foundation Translation Prize

Nobel laureate Claude Simon has captivated readers worldwide with his relentless examination of life experience--in particular his own. While he admits there are defining moments in life--eight days of battle during World War II were his unforgettable experience--The Jardin des Plantes rings with his refusal to be defined by any single event. His thoughts show the complexity, the fabulous chaos, that make up the experience of life for Simon and, he insists, for all thinking human beings.

"Simon's novel is eminently modern, inaugurating as it does links between incommensurable experiences, histories, landscapes, and voices. His writing engages readers in ways of seeing the present by displaying the richness and diversity of its links to the past. Jordan Stump's excellent and deft translation gives readers a privileged access to Simon's inventive work of linking incommensurable worlds." --Maria Minich Brewer, University of Minnesota

"Claude Simon takes us to another realm of reality by showing us the complexity and the chaos that make up the human condition." --Review of Contemporary Fiction

"Connoisseurs of experimentation and lovers of puzzles and epics will find it endlessly satisfying." --Publishers Weekly