ABSTRACT
When asked after the Second World War which French writer most urgently deserved to be translated into English, Samuel Beckett cited the little-known Emmanuel Bove (1886–1945), arguing that no contemporary author had such a sharp sense for “touching details.” More than thirty years later, the Austrian writer Peter Handke again called attention to Bove by translating three of his books into German. These qualities characterize Bove’s Le Piege (1945), available in English as Quicksand in a superb translation by Dominic Di Bernardi. This novel, an important element of the Bove canon, will be a major discovery even to readers who know French literature well. The ending, inevitably tragic, is not without surprises, however. In one astonishing sentence near the end, Bove casts an unexpected light on everything that has happened. After brilliantly dissecting the intricate nature of a coward’s mind—the incessant self-justifying of a “man without qualities”—Bove suddenly redeems Bridet’s moral nature.
