Bad Eminence
by James Greer
And Other Stories 2022
289 pages
14×21 cm
Meet Vanessa Salomon, a privileged and misanthropic French-American translator hailing from a wealthy Parisian family. Her twin sister is a famous movie star, which Vanessa resents deeply and daily. The only man Vanessa ever loved recently killed himself by jumping off the roof of her building.
Vanessa has just started working on an English translation of a titillating, experimental thriller by a dead author when she’s offered a more prominent gig: translating the latest book by an Extremely Famous French Writer who is not in any way based on Michel Houellebecq. As soon as she agrees to meet this writer, however, her other, more obscure project begins to fight back – leading Vanessa down into a literary hell of traps and con games and sadism and doppelgangers and mystic visions and strange assignations and, finally, the secret of life itself.
Peppered with ‘sponsored content’ providing cocktail recipes utilizing a brand of liquor imported by the film director Steven Soderbergh, and with a cameo from the actress Juno Temple, Bad Eminence is at once a sexy, old-school literary satire, as well as a jolly thumb in the eyes of contemporary screen-life and digital celebrity.
Here you can download an English BOOK PROFILE
Press:
«With eye and ear and tongue – and oh brother, what a tongue! – James Greer is the leading Renaissance Man for our current and possibly terminal Dark Ages.»
Joshua Cohen
«James Greer is the Daphne de Maurier of psychological French literary translation thrillers that don’t in any legally actionable way involve Michel Houellebecq. Bad Eminence is a funny, witty walk into a world where words, memories, people, life, death, and truth have more than one meaning.»
Ben Schwartz
«Strong writing and shrewd perceptions prevail, backed by wry humour, compelling stumblebum characters, a true-blue louche atmosphere, and arresting insights into the dream of art, be it literature or rock and roll.»
Donna Seaman, Booklist
«A Nabokovian thriller, light-hearted and caustic, which is also a subtle reflection on all forms of manipulation, be they criminal, corporate, amorous or… novelistic.»
Éric Chevillard, Le Monde
«Greer’s lyrical erudition is both serious work and seriously fun… proof that there remain new places to go, both on paper and in the known universe.»
Publishers Weekly
«Greer does a superb job of transcending conventional genrefication, bringing something fresh to contemporary literature… A very enjoyable read [with a] highly inventive structure, full of eccentricities.»
Library Journal
«A thoroughly bizarre, frequently compelling literary thriller.»
Kirkus Reviews
«The narrator of James Greer’s Bad Eminence, Vanessa Salomon, comes on like a double-deranged cross of Tristram Shandy and Charles Kinbote only twice as funny and half as self-aware. What makes it work is Greer’s pinpoint control of Vanessa’s ineffably charming voice (and, uh, her incredible cocktail recipes! Pour yourself a Vieux Carré, why don’t you?), and his diabolical ability to make her digressions amount to something. (Also, did I mention the cocktail recipes?) If this book has flaws, I didn’t notice them. Bad Eminence is a stone blast from start to finish.»
Matthew Specktor
Rights available in a selection of countries
Represented in collaboration with And Other Stories
James Greer is a novelist, screenwriter, and musician. His previous books include the novels Artificial Light and The Failure, and the story collection Everything Flows. As a screenwriter, he’s written or cowritten written several movies, including Max Keeble’s Big Move, Just My Luck, The Spy Next Door, and Unsane. He’s also played in a number of not-very-well known indie-rock bands. He tends to move around a lot, so it wouldn’t be helpful to say where he lives, because he probably doesn’t anymore.
