Life in pieces, like sugar

Life in pieces, like sugar

€18,00
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Life in pieces, like sugar

Life in pieces, like sugar

of Jonathan Bay and Ward Ivan Rafik

€18,00
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This novel explores the seriousness with which two brothers play at war and then come to believe in love, quietly subverting heroism and its lost battles. Reading it is like unpacking a suitcase upon returning from a long journey: your hands full of little trinkets you’ve picked up along the way, with that bittersweet feeling of having salvaged the best of a bygone era

Read the back cover

Sunday. An empty street. Two young brothers dressed as Zorro and Crockett wait for the bus to go fight at the Alamo, the famous battle. And perhaps die there. But there are no buses on Sundays. Thus begins a madcap journey aboard a green Lada driven by a clown with an unfortunate destiny, accompanied by a poet-boxer obsessed with sharks. They travel from Europe to the Balkans, from Istanbul to New York, Flagstaff, Dallas, Junction.
Meanwhile, in San Ridero, Mexico, in a brothel adorned with a thousand pink lanterns, little Esperanza plays an out-of-tune piano all night long. An old man has listened to her for years, right down to the last note. Painful memories swirl between his silent lips. He has no name and no age; the people around him call him Old Zorro.
Life of a child, life of a hero, life of a brother, life of an inspired person, life of a clown, life of a fool. This book recounts the inevitable fragmentation of our existences between joys, sorrows, and sweet moments of observation.
To give this story a unique perspective, photographer Ward Ivan Rafik has created numerous portraits of sacred childhood objects—precious treasures, precious presences. Objects that are hidden in the pockets and hands of the story's protagonists and that punctuate the pages of this illustrated novel.
Pencil sharpener. Hazelnut. Sticky hand. Stamp. Birthday candle. Life in pieces, like sugar.

Technical information

328 pages ⭐︎ Attractive pocket-sized format (12.7 cm x 17.5 cm) ⭐︎ Hardcover, designed and illustrated by Tom Haugomat ⭐︎ ISBN 979-10-415-8592-2

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Life in pieces, like sugar ⭐︎ Jonathan Bay and Ward Ivan Rafik

Extract

“And in those moments of play, on the back seat of the Lada, time melted away, gently, very gently, like a square of chocolate in the palm of your hand. So far away still that impossible day when, pulled forward by life, by age, they would suddenly stop playing.

One, then the other. Forever.

Jonathan Bay

Avocat d’affaires, galeriste, écriveur d’histoires et boxeur (pas aussi bien qu’il voudrait), Jonathan Bay cumule les métiers et les expériences comme des champs croisés d’inspiration. Avec son meilleur ami, il a édité plusieurs romans illustrés au sein de Tishina (parmi lesquels Soie d’Alessandro Baricco et Rébecca Dautremer ; Des Souris et des Hommes de John Steinbeck et Rébecca Dautremer ; Fup (L’Oiseau Canadèche) de Jim Dodge et Tom Haugomat, ou, tout récemment, Le Vieux qui lisait des romans d’amour, de Luis Sepúlveda et Joanna Concejo). 

La vie en morceaux, comme le sucre est son premier roman paru chez iskra. Il sera suivi par un deuxième livre, en réalité le tout premier qu’il a publié, Choux et néons, dans une réédition à paraître très prochainement. 

Ward Ivan Rafik

est photographe de mode et réalisateur. Après des études universitaires en sciences, il choisit de s’installer à Paris, où il se forme à la photographie. Il collabore ensuite avec plusieurs photographes avant de devenir premier assistant du légendaire Peter Lindbergh. Après quatre années passées à parcourir le monde à ses côtés, il décide de poursuivre son travail en son nom propre, faisant régulièrement la couverture de grands magazines. Vous savez à présent qu’il est capable de troquer une pince à linge en top model et une bille en boule à facettes, et que le papier non glacé lui réussit tout aussi bien. 

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