The Emperor, C'est Moi

Hugo Horiot is in love with wheels and all that cranks or turns. He is obsessed with the otherworldly language of pipes—they run, he imagines, from his family home to the center of the earth. He causes endless trouble at home and hates school. He muses: “I dream asleep, I dream awake”—but he dreams so hard he shuts out the world with reveries that are not just curious but dangerous and painful too. School is a prison he must escape, his teachers oppressors, and his classmates “a band of jolly torturers.” This is the portrait of a boy who might happen to suffer from autism, but who is also a beautiful rebel inspired to blaze his own path through childhood to find an enduring sense of personal freedom.

HUGO HORIOT is a young French actor, director, and writer. In 2005, he was admitted to the Theatre du Jour, a French theater academy, where he studied the art of acting with Pierre Debauche. The Emperor, C'est Moi, the narrative of his experiences with autism, won the Prix Paroles de patients, a French award that recognizes writers writing about disease and healing. The text was later adapted for the stage, with Horiot playing his own character. "I am not cured of Autism," Horiot has said, "I have learned to live with it." He resides in Paris. 
 
Translator LINDA COVERDALE holds a Ph.D. in French Studies from the Johns Hopkins University and has translated over seventy books. A Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, she has won the 2004 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the 2006 Scott Moncrieff Prize, and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize in both 1997 and 2008. She lives in Brooklyn.