Join us for another installment of Novel Night, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. And we’ll also have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles. Also worth noting: we’re offering 20% OFF ALL FICTION TITLES during Novel Night (from 6pm till closing).

This month’s Novel Night features acclaimed French writer and translator Brice Matthieussent, who will be sharing his novel Revenge of the Translator, a Nabokovian metafictional thriller.

The work of a masterful novelist and translator collide in this visionary and darkly hilarious debut from acclaimed French writer Brice Matthieussent. Revenge of the Translator follows Trad, who is translating a mysterious author’s book, Translator’s Revenge, from English to French. The book opens as a series of footnotes from Trad as he justifies changes he makes. As the novel progresses, Trad begins to take over the writing, methodically breaking down the work of the original writer and changing the course of the text. The lines between reality and fiction start to blur as Trad’s world overlaps with the characters in Translator’s Revenge, who seem to grow more and more independent of Trad’s increasingly deranged struggle to control the plot. Revenge of the Translator is a brilliant, rule-defying exploration of literature, the act of writing and translating, and the often complicated relationship between authors and their translators.

Brice Matthieussent is an award-winning translator of over 200 books from English into French, including works by Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller, Bret Easton Ellis, Thomas Pynchon, Jim Harrison, and Charles Bukowski. He graduated from the École nationale supérieure Mines de Paris in 1973, and earned his PhD in philosophy in 1977. Matthieussent currently resides in Marseille, France, where he teaches the history of contemporary art and aesthetics at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. Revenge of the Translator, awarded the Prix du style Cultura, is his debut novel, and his first to appear in English. He is also the author of the novels Good Vibrations (2014) and Luxuosa (2015), all published by P.O.L.