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“Yet history, my dear children, is an old lady ever young, capricious and energetic, devilishly romantic, who bores easily and only dreams of adventures, cuts and scrapes, somber tragedies, spectacular feats, dramatic reversals, and coups d’états… Ørop was thus well and truly invaded.” (Renaud Camus)
“The tragedies that had Copenhagen as their stage in early 2015, and above all the investigations, inquiries, and upheavals that ensued, brought to light a hitherto unpublished fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, one that is unfortunately incomplete, either because its end was never written or because it remains to be found…”
Thus begins Ørop, the first work of fiction by Renaud Camus ever to be published in English translation. With this little fairy tale (or nightmare), Camus plunges us into the last days of the Øropeans of Ørop, a benighted empire that has resolved to once and for all escape history for an eternal present where life resumes each morning "at the first line of the first page of the first volume". History, alas, has other plans…
The author of over 150 books in various genres, Renaud Camus is perhaps known as the man who coined "The Great Replacement", his phrase for the sweeping demographic changes that are now transforming Europe and its diasporas throughout the world. With Ørop, he offers us a Swiftian parable for our times.
“It’s a single short story, but like all good myths and fables, it packs great symbolic power... If I were teaching a class on our crisis, I would press Ørop into the hands of my students.”
“Terrifying!"
“Renaud Camus is a mauvais garçon in the French literary scene. He's not afraid to speak inconvenient truths and expose the self-deceptions of the establishment.”
A native of Chamalières in the Auvergne region of central France, Renaud Camus (b. 1946) is one of France’s most brilliant stylists and the author of more than 150 books. Tricks, his first and only work to be translated into English until now, appeared in 1979 and was prefaced by Roland Barthes, one of twentieth-century France’s greatest literary critics and Camus’ mentor. In addition to the political essays collected in Enemy of the Disaster, Camus is also known for works of fiction, philosophy, travel writing, art criticism, and the extensive diary he has kept and published for over forty years. He lives in the Chateau de Plieux in the village of Plieux in southwestern France and is the president of a small political party, the Party of Innocence, which advocates immigration and education reform and the promotion of civic peace.
Ethan Rundell is a translator, journalist, alumnus of UC, Berkeley and Paris' School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS). He has translated over a dozen books as well as scores of academic articles. After several years in France, he now lives in North Carolina.