A small group of survivors presses on relentlessly across desolate moorlands. Among them are a former nun whose prayers seem to attract disaster, and a bard who, when night falls, sings of the end of all things. The march drags on, punctuated by unsettling encounters, wolf attacks, and tragic incidents that gradually break apart the fragile group. On their trail follows a strange bonze-woman, tasked with steering these survivors onto a less arduous path. But for those who remain, the wandering continues, at times taking on the quality of a slow, unhinged Western.
Retour au goudron is a monumental work, comprising 343 bardic notebooks with recurring sections and containing numerous previously unpublished texts. These texts are published as an eleven-volume edition released simultaneously by different publishers. La Grande Misère is one component of this ultimate literary performance. And so, under the signature of the collective Infernus Iohannes, the edifice of post-exoticism comes to a close—a movement of which Antoine Volodine has long been the standard-bearer.
