The Eleven

Winner of the French Academy's Grand Prix du Roman. "Michon's prose tends to slow down in order to oblige you to hear its rhythms and also to see and touch and smell what is happening beneath it." Harper's Magazine He was not tall, unobtrusive, but he held your attention by his feverish silence, his dark cheer, his alternately arrogant and oblique mannergrim, you would call it. At least that was true seeing him later in life. None of that appears on the Wurzburg ceilings in the portrait Tiepolo left of him, when the model was twenty years old: he is there, so they say, and you can go see him there, perched among a hundred princes, a hundred constables, and ushers . . . Corentin, a young man of humble origins, rises up in Parisian society, becoming a famous painter who is called upon to decorate the homes of Louis XIV's mistresses. Yet his masterpiece is "The Eleven," a revolutionary representation of the eleven members of the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror. Pierre Michon, born in Cards, France, in 1945, is one of France's foremost contemporary writers. He has been awarded the Prix Decembre, the Grand Prix du Roman (for The Eleven), and the Prix de la Ville de Paris for his body of work. Elizabeth Deshaysis a teacher and a translator. She is the author of a study on bilingual education, L'Enfant Bilingue. She lives in Provence, France. Jody Gladdingis a poet and translator of over twenty books from the French. Her most recent collection of poetry is Rooms and Their Airs(Milkweed Editions). She teaches in the MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Pierre Michon, born in Cards, France in 1945, is one of France's foremost contemporary writers. He was awarded the French Academy’s Grand Prix du Roman for The Eleven, the Prix Decembre for his short novels Abbes and Corps du roi, the Prix Louis Guilloux for La grande beaune (The Origin of the World), and the Prix de la Ville de Paris in 1996 for his body of work.

Jody Gladding is a poet and translator. Her most recent collection of poetry is Rooms and Their Airs. She has translated over twenty books from French, including Serpent of Stars by Jean Giono. She teaches in the MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Vermont.

After devoting a part of her life to specialized horticulture, Elizabeth Deshays now works as a teacher and translator. She is the author of a study on bilingual education, L'Enfant Bilingue. In addition to Michon’s novels, she translated Julien Gracq’s La Presqu’ile (The Peninsula). She lives in Provence.

Jody Gladding and Elizabeth Deshays were awarded the French-American Foundation for Translation Prize in 2008 for their rendering of Pierre Michon’s Vies Minuscules (Small Lives).